Canis Familiar
by sockmonkeyhere
Summary: Oz is back, and he needs the Fang Gang's help. A sequel to Reentry.
1. Chapter 1

Setting: Post- "Not Fade Away"

Pairing: Spike/Fred; some Angel/Nina

Summary: Oz is back, and he needs the Fang Gang's help. Sequel to _Reentry._

Disclaimer: _Buffy The Vampire Slayer_ and _Angel_ canon characters belong to Mutant Enemy.

Author's Note #1: For readers who aren't familiar with this series of stories, Fred has been resurrected and now shares her body with Illyria, and they, along with Gunn, Angel, and Spike, have relocated to a hellmouth near Phoenix, Arizona. This series also contains some recurring original characters: Paloma, Kay, Thu Kheim, Dilip Singh, and Michael Wight were introduced in _Reentry._ They're another band of "white hats" similar to the Scoobies and the Fang Gang, because with all the evil in this 'verse it wouldn't make much sense for Buffy's and Angel's groups to be the only two in existence. I've made every effort to beat my original characters very thoroughly with the Mary Sue whuppin' stick before letting them wander out onto the pages.

Author's Note #2: The story's title is a play on Canis familia, the scientific genus and species name for domestic dogs.

**Chapter 1**

"More pie?"

"Hmm?" The man in the armchair raised his eyes from the TV screen and glanced questioningly at his wife.

"You want more pie?" The wife's own plate was empty, save for some smears of pumpkin and whipped cream and a semicircle of crust. She'd never liked crust. On the floor beside her a small boy sat crosslegged, setting up dominoes in an intricate pattern. Late November breezes set a tree limb in motion and it scratched against the living room roof.

"Oh. No, thanks." The man turned back to his program. "Better get ready for bed, Peanut. It'll be dark soon."

"Okay." The boy gave one of the dominoes a small push and watched as the little blocks began to fall against each other in a series of ripples. When the last one hit the floor with a click, he rose and followed the woman into the bathroom.

"Here's your medicine," she said as he brushed his teeth. He washed the pills down with a handful of water. The woman smiled at him playfully. "And don't forget to pee or you'll wet your bed."

The boy rolled his eyes at her in mock disgust and smiled back. When she left the room he peed obediently, then padded down the hall to the basement door. "G'night," he said to his mother.

"'Night, Baby," she replied. She watched until he'd reached the foot of the stairs and turned on the little portable TV, then she closed the door and locked it. The boy plopped down on the mattress bed on the floor. He wiggled out of his clothes, crawled naked under the covers, and drowsily began to watch the Disney Channel.

"Can you give me a hand with this recycle stuff?" the woman asked her husband a few hours later. "Just put these bags in the trunk of the car. I'll get the soda cans."

As she passed the basement door she remembered a stack of newspapers she'd left on top of the dryer. "Honey?" she called, tapping on the door with the back of her fist. "You asleep?" She listened, heard no response, then unlocked the door and started down. In the semidarkness the TV flickered black and white; Disney Channel was rerunning old episodes of the original _Mickey Mouse Club._

_"We're the Mouseketeers / We want to say Hello-"_

Something exploded out of the darkness, smashing into her legs. It hurtled past her as she grappled for the handrail, missed, and tumbled headfirst down the flight of stairs to the bottom.

On the opposite end of the house, the man came through the front door for another load of boxes. He squatted to lift one. At the distinctive sound of claws on tile he looked up, and froze.

The animal was roughly the size of a German Shepherd, with a dog-like snout and brown, coarse fur. Its shoulders and butt were set higher than a dog's, though, and it bowed out at the elbows. It stopped when it saw the man; crouched and laid back its ears and growled a little.

"Maureen," the man called quietly, warily. No answer. His voice rose in dread and near-panic. "MAU**REEN**!"

The animal lifted its snout and sniffed the cool air of the opened front doorway. It pricked up its ears and suddenly bolted toward the threshold.

"NO!" the man shouted, and without thinking, grabbed the animal by the scruff of its neck. The Dog-Thing yelped in surprise and twisted wildly, clawing at the man. Razor-sharp nails tore his chest and neck open, and he released his hold and fell backward against an endtable, sending a ceramic lamp crashing to the floor. His elbow landed on the buttons of the living room TV's remote control, ratcheting up the volume, and the set roared, "**MOUSEKETEER ROLL CALL, COUNT OFF NOW! CUBBY! DARLENE! CHERYL!**" The animal screamed in fear and scrabbled to gain a foothold on the smooth tile flooring. It skidded to the front door, kicked over a potted palm, leaped a hedge, and galloped off into the night.

* * *

There was nothing like the holidays for bringing out the child in people, Fred smiled to herself - or the inner dork. After Thanksgiving dinner and enough parades and football games to sink a satellite dish, they'd all driven to the town square to watch Ashcraft's citizenry light its community Christmas tree, and then Charles and Spike had wandered into a honkytonk and gotten completely and cheerfully drunk. ("Look what they gave the out-of-town brothers! Mistletoe! You know birds spread this stuff by shittin' it.")

A phone call from Angel had come next: in the four months he'd been in L.A. there'd been no sign of Wolfram & Hart, no attempts on his life, no incidence of being recognized by anyone (although granted, he'd kept a low profile.) Still no word of Lorne, sadly, "But Con- ...but considering everything, it looks like we can all breathe a little easier now. Well, most of us. Breathe, I mean. Most of _you_, that is."

"Angel, you're babbling!" Fred had cheered. "And you're really good at it for a beginner! How's Nina?"

"Fine. Fine." Fred had imagined Angel's face turning red as he worked up his speech. "I think I'm gonna spend Christmas here with her and her niece and sister."

"That's wonderful. 'Course we'll miss you, but I know you'll have a good time. Do you think it'd be okay for me to call my parents now?"

"Well, based on the information that Paloma and Michael have been digging up, and from what I've learned here, I think it's safe to assume that the rumor about the Senior Partners being displaced and possibly killed by a rival faction is probably true. If there _is_ a new bunch, they don't see us as much of a threat now, apparently...so yeah, call your family."

"Thank you," she had whispered, pushing the words out past the lump in her throat.

Now she sat down by the phone in the cabin that she and Spike shared at the Happy Trails Tourist Court ("Bedding America Since 1955") and picked up the receiver. Around the window the string of Christmas lights - big ones; she liked the big fat bulbs better than the little twinkly ones, even if they did burn your fingers - glowed bright with color and the memory of home. She composed herself and dialed a much-loved number.

"Daddy, it's me. I'm all right."

* * *

"Uncle Ken?"

The young man and his mother arrived at about the crack of dawn; the father had been in the waiting room all night, Nurse Forbes remembered. Quiet group; none of the histrionics that you'd expect to see in a case like this one: wife comatose from a head injury, husband nearly dead of blood loss and lacerations _(Missed the major arteries, thank you Jesus)_, and their nine-year-old son probably dragged off and eaten by a mountain lion. That was Forbes' theory, anyway: damn idiots with their pet cougars and tigers and bear cubs, baby crocodiles in their bathrooms and giant snakes in their closets, and then they were _surprised_ when the poor dumb animals grew up and escaped and behaved the way Nature intended. This one had even left pawprints in the blood, according to the ambulance driver.

"Uncle Ken?"

"Daniel." The man's face was pale and slack; his lips barely moved. The beeping monitors almost drowned out his voice. "The drugs...wore off."

"I know."

"The drugs...don't work now."

"I'll find him. Mom and Dad are here; they're gonna stay with you and Aunt Maureen. I'll find Jordy."

The man's eyes closed wearily. Oz gave his hand a squeeze, and left him in the care of the ICU nurse.

Twenty minutes later he pulled up in front of his relatives' house; it was cordoned off with crime scene tape, and a detective or two still milled about. Neighbors stood in groups of twos and threes, worried and curious, some still in their pajamas. "I was walking my dog," one of them said, repeating the story for perhaps the dozenth time. "Dog started barkin' and sniffin' around and peein' all over everything, like they do when they meet a new dog, y'know? An' I notice Osbourne's trunk open, and I go to the door to ask if he left it that way on purpose, and holy god, you never _saw_ so much blood!" The neighbor shivered and drew his coat more tightly around him.

Oz walked as close to the house as the tape would allow. He stood still, examining the lawn, the front doorstep. He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply, waited, turned his head a little and inhaled again. A cool winter wind blew past him, and he flared his nostrils one last time to be certain.

Southeast.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

_The faster he ran, the happier he became. Cold night air flowed over his face, washing away the frightening thoughts of the LOUD room, the room with the bright lights and the thing that grabbed and the floor that wouldn't cooperate with his feet. He passed houses, cars, chainlink fences. Occasionally a very brave or aggressive dog would rush its fence, snarling threats of Blue Murder. Pools of light waxed and waned as he passed beneath the streetlamps. Garbage cans and dumpsters gave off fascinating aromas. _

_Now the spaces between the houses were becoming more frequent; he moved through patches of tall grass and underbrush. He slowed his pace a bit, stopping now and then to examine objects on the shoulder of the road: a tennis shoe; a strip of shredded tire; a disposable diaper. He picked up the diaper with his front paws, bearlike, and gave it a cursory chew. He dropped it when a more interesting smell caught his attention: a rabbit, dead in the ditch for several days, another victim of Headlight Thrall. He sniffed this new prize thoroughly, then fell to the ground and rolled around on the pungent carcass in a delighted frenzy, finally standing upright on his hind legs and giving himself a good shake. _

_It occurred to him that he was hungry. The rabbit tasted too rotten; he wanted something fresh, something along the lines of what he had smelled in the house after the man had fallen. Some of it still clung to the tops of his paws; he licked the coppery-tasting remains off, and whined for more._

* * *

In the early morning hours of the second day after Thanksgiving, Spike slipped quietly into the tourist cabin and quietly out of his clothes. The night's patrol had yielded one, count 'em, one, vampire, and a would-be house burglar whom he had scared so badly that he doubted the bloke would want to go near any kind of building ever again.

He wrapped himself around Fred as she lay sleeping, kissing and fondling her into arousal, then eased her onto her back and settled himself there. She woke gradually and unalarmed, intoxicated by the erotic feel and weight of the male body moving on top of her in the dark, taking her in her sleep like an incubus. When she found her voice she began to coo and then cry with pleasure.

"Scream any louder, Love, and someone's liable to call the constable," Spike teased her later, after bone-melting climaxes had left them limp and exhausted. Fred only smiled, fully awake now. She sat up, her pretty legs tucked underneath her, and tousled his hair affectionately.

I've got our things packed," she told him. "Interstate 10 will take us through Tucson and Las Cruces to El Paso, about seven hours, not counting any stops. If we leave around 4:00 we should get there by midnight. You don't mind being stuck in the back of the van for about an hour, do you?"

"Better than ridin' up front and getting fried." He smiled up at her lazily and draped an arm around her hips. She became almost giddy whenever she talked about this trip to visit her parents; it had been nearly a year since she'd seen them last, and they meant the world to her, by the sound of it. Be odd to do Christmas again after more than a century of ignoring it - an uncomfortable bit of him wished that he could pass on it this year, too, as Singh and Paloma would do. But Fred wanted him in the thick of it, and he couldn't tell her No.

Now her eyes were wandering down his body and she was catching her bottom lip with her teeth. "Want another go already?" he grinned.

She blushed a little and nodded her head. He recognized the hesitation; sat up and purred into her ear, "Tell me what you want."

"...Tie me down."

The strips of soft cotton cloth were still in the bureau's top drawer. He found them in the darkness and then turned on a lamp to avoid tripping over the suitcases Fred had laid out.

"You've got to be a good girl now," he whispered a few minutes later. "Say 'Please' and mind me." She nodded, wide-eyed. "No crying out," he added. "Mustn't wiggle. Be quiet as a mouse. Don't want to disturb the neighbors while I'm tasting you." He lowered his lips to a spot and then gave her a wicked, seductive smile. "Behave, and I'll make it nice."

She tried very hard to be good.

* * *

_He traveled slowly now, wanting food but having not the slightest idea where to find it. Another rabbit, this one warm and delicious-smelling, hopped across his path, but he was not an experienced chaser and the little creature easily evaded him. He lapped some water from a stockpond and then looked around helplessly, completely lost. He knew that he wanted his den, although he couldn't remember the den itself. Miserable and lonely, he began to howl._

_Half an hour passed. Then a new smell arrested his cries. Two Dog-Things, like his own reflection in the water (he knew it was his own reflection but didn't know __**how**__ he knew), were approaching the pond at the opposite bank. They lowered their heads to drink, but kept their eyes up and on him, watching._

_When they turned to leave he ran after them eagerly. The largest, a male, stood up and bared its teeth, but the female remained on all fours and wagged her tail. He dropped on his belly in deference to the male and crawled forward, rolling onto his back when he reached the male's feet. The male made what sounded almost like a human sigh. It relaxed its guard and walked away toward a line of trees. The female gave a chirping bark and trotted by its side._

_He followed them into the wooded area and discovered three more of his kind, another female and two males. A banquet lay on the ground before him: a freshly-killed deer and the freshly-killed human who had shot it. He stood meekly in submission as the pack gave him a good sniff-over. Then, at some invisible signal, he dived into the pile of fresh meat and ate until he could eat no more. _

_When he had rested, he joined the others back out in the open. The air was sharp and clear and crisp. The pack yelped and gamboled, snapping at one another playfully. The full moon called out to them like an aphrodisiac, and they danced under the stars._

* * *

The car stunk, like beer and cigarettes and mildew and B.O. and the time the mouse died in the wall. Jordy had been scared out of his mind for three days now, finally reaching the point where the fear had worn him out and he'd found it easier not to think, and just do what MamaRita wanted. What _Jordy_ wanted was to find a phone and call 911, but no one in the car would let him. The first day they'd stopped at a Goodwill while the people in the other car went in to buy him some clothes and he'd tried to jump out then, but Rita _(She's NOT my mama)_ had started crying and her husband or whoever he was had given Jordy such a mean look and yelled so many cuss words at him that Jordy had let go of the doorhandle immediately.

He hadn't tried to leave anymore after that.

Rita nibbled daintily on potato chips and hummed to herself as their little caravan made its way eastward. When they crossed an I-10 overpass she nudged Jordy and broke into a sunny smile.

"You ever been to Austin, Bobby? There's a bridge there, 'n ever' night bats come _pouring_ out from under it, hunnerds of 'em, 'n ever'body comes 'n watches."

Jordy shook his head dully and continued to stare out at the unfamiliar landscapes moving past him through the car window.

* * *

Oz drove slowly, with the window opened. For two days he'd followed the trail as far as he could on foot, until the combination of moonrise and sunset had forced him home. Now at last the moon released her hold for another month, and he was free to track his cousin.

South of the city he stalked the scent along a highway, then across some pastureland toward a tree line. As he neared the trees his ears caught the sounds of human voices, and then the clipped, businesslike dispatches of a police radio. He made his way back to his car quickly, drove a few hundred yards, and turned up an asphalt road toward the thicket as a sickening wad of dread coagulated in his gut, for along with Jordy's scent he'd also smelled human blood.

An ambulance passed him, headed away from the thicket toward town, its siren silent. He bore down on the gas pedal and thudded over the ruts to the area where two patrol cars were parked and a sheriff's deputy was tinkering with a digital camera.

"What happened?" Oz asked him tersely, climbing out of his own automobile. At the officer's curious and suspicious look he added, "My little cousin's missing...did you find him here?"

"Oh. No, this was an adult. Didn't see any sign of a kid. Who is he again?"

"Jordan Osbourne. He disappeared from his house in Phoenix Thanksgiving Night. Little guy, nine."

The deputy shook his head. "No sign of a kid anywhere here."

Oz's eyes traveled along the length of yellow tape festooning the tree trunks. He was beginning to hate that color. "Was there an accident? I saw an ambulance down the road."

The officer hesitated, then finally replied, "Yeah, the property owner found a body. Grown man, though. Not sure what happened; animals been at it." He leaned against the squad car and rubbed his hand over his face as though trying to rid his eyes of the image. "Listen, let me get your name and address - in case we hear anything."

_Or in case you decide to question me later about what I'm doing out here,_ Oz thought grimly. He gave the officer the information, returned to his car, and drove back the way he'd come.

When he reached the main road again he pulled over once more. He laid his arms across the top of the steering wheel, rested his face against them, and stared silently through the windshield at the highway that stretched to the horizon.

He got out of the car; knelt on the ground.

Closed his eyes and took a breath.

Bloodhounds, it is said, can track a human in a moving car by smelling the sloughed skin cells blown out through the vehicle's ventilation system and onto the road. The Council of Watchers would have been intrigued to learn that werewolves possessed that skill as well.

That, and in some cases a low-frequency psychic bond that served as a primitive type of beacon. Oz got back in his car and pulled out onto the highway.

I-10; south.


	3. Chapter 3

**Chapter 3**

"DAT-dadada / DAT-dadada," Fred warbled under her breath, three hours into the trip to Texas. She loved this song - "Carol of the Bells," the title was - but she could never remember all the words, and was forced to ad-lib most of it. "DAT-dadada / DAT-dadada / DAT-dadada / DAT-dadada..."

"This little ditty going to end anytime soon, Petal?" Spike asked her hopefully. She grinned.

"Someday, maybe. Are you having fun yet?"

"Oodles, but if I hear much more of the Mannheim Steamroller I may have to kill something."

"Okay," Fred acquiesced. She leaned forward in the passenger seat and fished another audiocassette from the glove compartment, and switched it out with the tape in the player. The dashboard speakers burst forth the helium balloon voices of Alvin & The Chipmunks.

"Oh, thank you so _bloody_ much," Spike chuckled. Fred giggled hysterically and shrieked, "Me, / I want / a HU- / -la hoop!"

"You know, it's my turn to pick the music," he reminded her. "Where's that Talking Heads tape?" Keeping one hand on the steering wheel, he changed cassettes a second time, and settled back into the somewhat lumpy driver's seat.

"You miss the Viper, don't you?" Fred said sympathetically. "You don't look very much at home in this ploddy old van."

Spike looked over at her in mild surprise. "Hadn't thought about it...yeah, it _was_ a fantastic little car, wasn't it? Wish I'd taken you for a drive in it." He could picture her in it now, seated next to him, her cute little ingenue face alive with excitement as they zipped down the freeway, and he felt the pang of regret for good things overlooked and opportunities not taken. Suddenly he reached out and popped the tape player's Eject button. He picked up one of the Christmas tapes and squinted at it in the dark. "Used to like this tune back in the day."

He inserted the tape and jiggered the FastForward and Rewind buttons and then it was Fred's turn to be surprised: "In The Bleak Midwinter," played on a harp. A slow, peaceful song, one that spoke of gas lamps and the graciousness and hush of Victorian parlors.

She gazed at Spike wordlessly. After a few stanzas, she stretched out her hand and touched his cheek. Then she curled up with her head on her folded-up car coat and love in her face, and they continued to listen in comfortable silence.

* * *

"WINIFRED. My God, Hon, where ARE you?" For the first time in her life her father's voice had sounded old, and it made Fred weep to think of what her work and her choices had put her parents through. Her explanation of her latest disappearance had come out rather garbled, choked as it was by tears, and she had decided to refrain from telling them that she'd actually _died_ this time - saying that she'd been in hiding from her evil, vengeful former employers would be upsetting enough. Likewise, the revelation of Illyria could wait for the time being.

"You're not driving here by yourself," her father had announced, putting his foot down. "We're comin' out to get you."

"It's all right, Dad; a friend is coming with me."

"That nice English fella?"

"Yes-" And then she'd realized that he meant Wesley.

"I mean no - his name's Spike - well, William, but he goes by 'Spike'...you remember the vampire ghost friend of Angel's I told you about last year?"

"Huh?" The description was obviously lost on him. "Oh...I was talking about your fella that worked there at the law office with you. The one you were with when we saw you last."

It had pained her to think of Wes. "He's dead, Daddy," she'd answered, her voice barely audible. "He was murdered by the Senior Partners' people just before we left Los Angeles."

"My God," he'd said softly.

Wesley; wise Cordelia; sweet, funny Lorne..._I miss you guys so much. How did we lose so many so fast? How did we get so scattered apart? _Fred suddenly, desperately hoped that Angel would indeed have a good time with Nina, that Charles would enjoy his holiday with Kay's family and the Kheims, that Michael would have a safe journey to his relatives in Nebraska. _And Good Night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are._

She had no idea who Mrs. Calabash was, only that her father had always said that when he tucked her in bed as a child, using the gravelly voice of the narrator from the "Frosty the Snowman" cartoon, but she wished Mrs. Calabash well, too.

* * *

The trail weaved back and forth like a drunk making his way through a filled-up parking lot, but eventually it always circled back to Interstate 10. Always, too, Jordy's smell was accompanied by those of five other people, all of them strangers to Oz. It was harder in large towns and cities, where the trail became lost in pollution and chemicals and a thousand other odors, and it sometimes took him days to pick it up again.

In Tucson it swung south down Interstate 19 all the way to Nogales, on the Mexican border. At around two o'clock in the afternoon, Oz entered a tacked-together building with blacked-out windows and a one-style-fits-all yellow sign on wheels with "LIQUER-BEER-W1NE" spelled out badly in big slide-on letters.

Inside the air was warm, but close and fetid. The furnishings were as random as the building's exterior: a pool table circa Sears Catalogue 1973; bits of assorted chairs and tables; a couple of commercial refrigerators stocked with brown and green and amber bottles. In places the soiled vinyl flooring had ripped free of its moorings and curled up at the edges, waiting to trip a wayward foot.

"Corona," Oz said to the jaundice-colored man behind the counter. The man nodded tiredly and began searching through one of the coolers.

The room's other occupants, a very large and very dangerous-looking biker and two bored, scrawny young rednecks, turned and looked at the new customer. One of the rednecks stared jeeringly into Oz's eyes and made soft kissing noises, silently challenging him. _Let's see what you're made of, College Boy. There's two of us and just one of you and it's not often that we get a chance to kick someone's ass, __**really**__ kick it._

Oz ignored him and handed the bartender some crumpled dollars and a photograph. "Have you seen this kid around here lately?"

Jaundice examined the snapshot. "Uh-uh. He a runaway?"

"No. We think he's been kidnapped. He might be traveling with a group of four or five people."

The bartender clucked sympathetically. "Jesus, that's too bad. If I see him I'll be sure and let the cops know."

"Tell them to call the Phoenix police. That's where he's from. Here's his name." Oz took a pen from his coat pocket and scrawled Jordy's moniker on a paper coaster. "Thanks." He picked up his beer and crossed the room to the door, well aware of several pairs of eyes boring holes in the back of his head. Once outside he blinked in the bright sunlight. He was nearly to his car when he heard the liquor store's door open and close again.

_Shit._

He looked up, expecting the rednecks and their testosterone-fired knuckles. What he saw alarmed him almost as much: the biker, walking toward him, the face atop his bull neck intense.

The biker parked one huge, meaty hand on the driver's-side door of Oz's car. He held out the other. "C'n I see that picture a second?"

Oz fished the photo from his pocket and the biker studied it for several long minutes.

"I don't know if this is the one," he said finally, "But a few days ago I saw a group, couple of men and women, two cars, at one of those rest stops on the side of the highway, back up toward Tucson - those places with a Coke machine and a shitter, y'know? One of 'em bummed a cigarette off me and said they were goin' to Roswell to look at the flying saucers. They had a kid looked kinda like this with 'em."

Oz's entire body tightened. "Was he all right?"

"I don't know, he stayed in the car mostly; didn't get a real good look at him. Didn't pay any attention to what the cars looked like either. Sorry."

"No, it's cool; that helps a lot." _Roswell. I-10 to Las Cruces. State highways from there, north and east._

"Here," the biker said, and pulled a worn business card out of his wallet. "There's a cycle repair shop in Tucson. You can get hold of me there if you need to."

Oz took the card, barely hearing him. "Thanks."

"Don't mention it." The biker swung his leg over a nearby Harley and kicked it to life with a buzzing roar. Oz got into his own vehicle, dropping the unopened, forgotten beer to the floorboard, and pulled onto the road behind the motorcycle.

On I-19 several miles north of Nogales, the biker raised one arm and began pointing at a roadside park and restroom facility. Oz waved in acknowledgement. The biker made a thumbs-up signal, and then continued on up the highway, finally vanishing into the distance.

The rest stop was quiet and deserted, with only the sound of the wind and, as he drew closer, the soft hum of the soda machine. Oz moved slowly around the grounds, breathing, listening. He came to the door of the men's room and pulled it open. It protested, squealing a little, and the sound echoed hollowly through the room and startled the silence.

He walked toward the room's far end, and at the last urinal on the wall, he found it.

The area around the rim that the cleaning crew had given only a lick and a promise. The area where a frightened, tired, nervous little boy had lost his aim and splattered a signature for anyone with the proper olfactory senses to read and recognize.

_Stay alive, Jord. Piss on __**everything.**__ I'm coming for you._


	4. Chapter 4

**Chapter 4**

"Fred...Fred."

"Hnnwhaaa?" She raised her face slowly from the seatback, muzzy with sleep.

"El Paso city limits comin' up. Need directions now."

"Oh. OH! Turn here, turn here!"

They rolled through the old, dozing city and into suburbs, and then down a country lane dotted with forty-year-old ranch style brick and stucco homes and a Depression era farmhouse of wooden clapboard.

"Here." The farmhouse was white, with a large front porch and glowing windows. Someone inside was awake and waiting.

Fred was out of the van before it even came to a full stop, charging across the yard and up the steps, thumping on the door and calling in a not quite wake-the-neighbors voice, "Daddy? Mama?"

The door flew open, spilling light onto the porch, and Fred was enveloped in Roger and Patricia Burkle's embrace. Squealing, booming, they dragged her across the threshold with cries of "Let me look at you!" and "Been watching the road all day!"

Spike came up silently, halting on the top porch step. The pool of living room light almost reached his toes.

"Spike!" Fred untangled herself from her parents' hugs and stretched an arm out to him. She caught him by the hand and tugged him toward her, chattering and heedless. Before he had time to remind her, she gave an enthusiastic yank and towed him headlong into the doorway. The Burkles watched in amazement as their guest slammed to a stop on the sill as if he'd smacked against a glass wall, bounced backward, winced, and gripped his nose.

"Oh my god, I'm sorry! I forgot!" Fred gasped, fluttering at Spike's face. "Oh, is it broken?"

" 'S' aw' ride," he assured her. He leaned back against one of the roof posts and shut his eyes. Blood began to seep from between his fingers and drip onto the porch. Roger Burkle stared at him, baffled.

"Son, do you want a tissue?"

Fred flailed. "I keep forgetting. One of you has to invite him into the house."

Trish Burkle blinked at her distraught daughter. "Won't you come in?" she asked Spike in a sweet and ladylike Melanie Wilkes of Twelve Oaks voice. She turned back to Fred. "Will that work?"

Fred nodded. "Daddy, have you still got that bag of Blue Ice in the freezer? Or one of your Popsicles?"

"Fred, I'm fine, really. Wet towel'll do it. I'm dryin' up already, see?" Spike blotted his nose on his sleeve and gave the Burkles a rueful smile. "Sorry about the dramatic intro."

Mr. Burkle chuckled. "Oh, you ain't the first fella here to bust his nose walkin' into a door. You're just the first one who didn't do it commode-huggin' drunk." He held the front door open wider and waved his hand. "Y'all c'mon inside before you let all the flies out."

* * *

The house was worn and comfortable, just the way Fred remembered it: same old green and yellow subway tile in the kitchen; same out-of-tune upright piano in the hall. In the living room a tree had been erected, with boxes of decorations stacked beside it. "I sent your daddy out to get it this morning," her mother told her, "Something to keep him busy for a few hours. Tomorrow I'm going to string lights all over this place."

In the back of the house, the spare bedroom was made up with fresh sheets and a bowl of potpourri. "Orange and cinnamon," Fred reported, sniffing it. "I can move it somewhere else if you don't like the smell."

"No, I like it fine. Listen, are you sure your mum and dad are okay with us sharing a room under their roof?"

Fred smiled, a little embarrassed. "I don't think dads are ever _completely_ okay with the idea of someone getting naked with their daughters. Mama was real discreet, though. She just said, 'Will you need one room or two?' like she was asking how many lumps of sugar I wanted in my coffee. But I think she would have drawn the line at putting us in my old childhood bedroom. It's still got my high school stuff in there. I really am sorry about bumping your face," she added, kissing the offended nose tenderly.

A surrealistic feeling washed over Spike, as it often did when he found himself the recipient of one of Fred's displays of affection. _It's just a dream; any minute now fist's gonna pop me in the mouth, gonna say she don't want me, ask if it has to mean something._

Nothing happened.

Fred curled up in his arms the same way she curled up every night, radiating heat and perfume and womanscent, and Spike allowed himself to relax and sink deep into the sheer bliss of being unequivocally loved. "'_Oranges and lemons,' say the bells of St. Clement's"...oranges and lemons and cinnamon...daft thing to be falling asleep to..._

* * *

In the wee hours of the morning, long before daylight, Fred went to her old bedroom and sat down among boxes piled on the floor. She picked through them slowly, gazing at some of the contents for minutes at a time before putting them down.

"Fred?" Spike opened the door a crack and looked in at her from the dark hallway, then stepped inside the room and closed the door again. She gave him a sad little smile, not saying anything. He watched her for a moment, then walked quietly to the side of the bed and sat down on it. He looked around the room, taking in the private world of a younger and more innocent Fred: withered chrysanthemum corsage from a long-ago football game, chemical-stained desk littered with textbooks and scientific instruments, flowery blue bedspread, white wicker rocking chair, an ancient home computer. Photos of a skinny, laughing little girl with brown braids and of a slender, laughing young teenager with geeky spectacles. A frilly goose-with-blue-ribbons bedside lamp and a poster of Billy Ray Cyrus with a cowboy hat and a mullet and an Achy-Breaky Heart.

"Scanner Girl's inner sanctum. 'Bout like I'd imagined it," Spike commented. "This your stuff from L.A.?" he added, nodding at the boxes.

"Yeah. The things the landlord and my parents packed up after I die- …after we disappeared. And the things from my office that Wesley packed and took to my apartment." She reached over a toy rabbit and picked up a thin, black pair of eyeglasses. "Look, these still haven't gotten lost. I was wearing them when I got sent to Pylea, did you know that? And look, here's my old driver's license; it survived Pylea, too. Pylea and Wolfram & Hart and Illyria, and here it is, still safe with me. I used to look at it and read it over and over when I was a slave, so I wouldn't forget what I _really_ was."

She looked up at Spike again. "You're a good listener. You're lucky you weren't in that cave with me; I'd have talked your ear off."

Spike dropped his head and chuckled. Fred placed the rabbit, glasses, and license carefully back in an opened box and peeled the tape from a sealed one. Spike leaned forward and raised the lid flaps. He almost shut them again when he saw what was on the top of the stack of contents: an old photograph of the Angel Investigations team - Cordelia, Fred, Angel, Gunn...and Wes.

"Sorry, Love," he said apologetically. "I wasn't sure if you felt like seein' that just now or not."

"It's okay." She fingered the torn strapping tape, and then added quietly, "I know what Wesley did to Charles."

Spike's eyes widened in surprise. "You know? Did Charlie tell you?"

"No. Michael saw it in a vision. One of his flashbacks. I saw it, too. Nobody knows that I know about it but you and Michael."

Her hands fell still in her lap.

"He had no right," she whispered. "Taking his rage out on people - _innocent_ people-"

"Don't know what to tell you, Pet. I didn't really know him that well. I know he was grieving for you."

"I don't want to inspire that kind of grief. Or that kind of love. It wasn't..." Fred wiped her eyes and searched for the right word. "It wasn't _healthy._ I shouldn't have started encouraging it."

She closed the photo box's lid. "And I shouldn't have started digging through Memory Lane in the middle of the night. Let's go back to bed."

" 'Kay." Spike stood up with her and dropped a kiss on her shoulder, then peered past her at a framed high school yearbook picture. "Were you really a member of the marching band?"

* * *

Halfway back to the guest bedroom, Fred stopped. "I remember when we made that AI photo. I could swear Angel was holding something when we took it. A cat? A puppy?"

"Himself?" Spike suggested.

Fred clamped her hand over her mouth to stifle a burst of laughter. "You pervert." She shook her head and resumed walking. "I guess it wasn't anything."

* * *

They slept late, and at midmorning found Fred's parents in the living room untying a Gordian knot of outdoor lights. De-tangled strings lay across the floor like merry tripwires.

"Breakfast is on the back of the stove," Trish called out. Her foot bobbed in time to the CD player, where Jose Feliciano was singing "Feliz Navidad" joyously, relentlessly, and at the top of his lungs. Spike smiled at her and nodded.

"Right, thanks," he called back, his voice lost among the stereo speakers.

"It gets worse," Fred whispered into his ear.

"How much worse?"

"Grandma Got Run Over By A Reindeer worse. Daddy likes Burl Ives."

They dished up plates of food. Jose's voice faded and was replaced by the _oooh oooh OOOH oooh oooh / oooh oooh OOOH oooh oooh_ of Elvis Presley's backup singers. Spike searched the table for marmalade unsuccessfully, and settled for grape jelly. "Speaking of Blue Christmases, when are you going to tell your family about Illyria?"

"Who's Illyria?" Roger asked, coming into the kitchen behind them. He opened the freezer door, pulled out a bag of chicken blood, sniffed it curiously, and set it back.

Fred grimaced. "Now?"

"Who's Illyria?" Roger repeated.

"She's this…thing I do," Fred began awkwardly. "See, just before we left Los Angeles we discovered a creature called Illyria, who used to be a god or an emperor or something eons ago, but its body was destroyed and its soul was encased in a sarcophagus-"

"Is this something I'm gonna need my heart pills for?"

"No! …And it needed a place to corporealize every now and then, because otherwise it has to float around all day in the ether and that can get boring and frustrating really fast, I mean just ask Spike, he did it for months-"

"Almost went bugshi- sorry, loony."

" -So we've worked out a system where every so often I turn blue all over and get superhuman strength and become possessed." Fred smiled weakly at her father.

Roger Burkle stood motionless. Then he carefully shut the freezer door.

"I'm gonna let _you_ explain this one to your mama."

* * *

Trish took the explanation remarkably well. "Does it speak English? And when you say 'possessed,' you don't mean like that little girl crawlin' down the stairs backwards on that awful DVD, do you?" She shifted a box of old-fashioned silverware from her hip and parked it on the dining room table.

"No, but sometimes Illyria's not very…tactful. And she doesn't have much of a sense of humor. And she likes to box with Spike."

The vampire snorted. "Box, hell; she likes to dribble my head on the sidewalk to see how high it'll bounce."

"I wonder if she'd be willing to do a little silver polishing?" Trish mused as she lifted some oddly-shaped utensils from the box. "I'll swear, some of these pieces are so old I don't have the slightest idea what they're used for." She held up a spoon with stubby tines on its end.

"That's an ice cream fork."

"A what?" Trish looked at Spike in surprise.

"Ice cream fork. And those little flat gadgets are food pushers. And these are asparagus tongs, and that's a butter pick-"

"Wait a minute, let me get a pencil; I want to write this down." Trish grabbed a notepad and began scribbling rapidly. "Are you an antiques collector? Where'd you learn all this?"

"I grew up with it. Used to dress up posh for dinner every night; had stemware and serving pieces everywhere you looked."

"Spike was born right before the Civil War, Mama." Fred sat down at the table and rested her chin on her hand. As she gazed at the silver, her expression went slack. Her eyes closed, and her chin and hand collapsed limply against her chest.

"It's all right," Spike quickly told the Burkles, although he was almost as unnerved by the sight as they were. "She's just takin' a trip to Illyriaville. She'll pull out of it soon as they're done talking."

Fred opened her eyes. "Illyria wants to be solid for a few hours. I don't mind if you all don't. It's been more than a month since her last visit; she really could use a break. It'll be okay," she added at her parents' look of alarm, "I always stay conscious during the visits now. We're actually getting pretty good at this."

She beamed with pride, and slowly, like ink seeping across a paper napkin, her pigment began to change. A blue rash appeared on her skin and lips, the shade of hypothermia. Irises faded to the color of robin's eggs; aquamarine streaks crept down her scalp. Within seconds the transformation was complete.

"God a'mighty," Roger breathed. Illyria cocked her head.

"Mr. Burkle. Mrs. Burkle." She looked around the room. "The shell's former dwelling. With dead vegetation."

"Yeah, we'll be decorating the dead veg with lots of sparkly bits later on, along with a lot of other confusing rituals," Spike told her. "Want to watch?"

"I want to go outside."

"Well, stay in the paddock fence so you don't get lost. And try not to let the neighbors see you."

Illyria narrowed her eyes in annoyance and started for the front door.

"And put on some pants and a shirt. You're wearin' pajamas."

When the Old One had disappeared into the bedroom, Trish hugged her arms tightly against her chest and pressed a hand to her mouth.

"I know," Spike confessed quietly. "I've never gotten completely used to it, either."

"It doesn't even _sound_ like her," Trish whispered. "Are you _sure_ my baby's in there?"

They watched later from the kitchen window as Illyria traversed the pasture behind the house. She strode to each corner of the lot as purposefully as if she had an appointment with it, then ran along the fence line at breakneck speed. She jerked to a halt, staring at the mountains in the distance. Finally she dropped down on her belly and peered at the ground, her face almost touching it.

"Probably found an ant hill," Spike guessed. "The bloody things fascinate her. I think she wants to win their allegiance."

Roger Burkle sighed. "It could be worse, I guess. At least Winnie's here and not in that damned slave world or Los AngHell-es." He turned to Spike with a face weathered by years of sun that the younger man had never seen. "I can't protect her anymore, not like I used to. I want you to promise me you'll try."

"You don't have to ask. I'd give my life for her."

Roger nodded, satisfied. "I believe you."


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

South of Carlsbad in southeastern New Mexico on a stretch of near-forgotten backroad, a collection of trailer houses hunkered on the desert floor, anchored to the ground by rust. The youngest of them was at least twenty years old, and all had taken on the color of the earth. A tomato-red Camaro sat alongside them, paint job new and shiny and glinting in the thin winter sunlight, but with a frame already gashed and dented by the carelessness of its current owners.

Rita and her entourage pulled into the yard in a hail of dust, spilling from their cars, laughing, happy to be home. One of the trailer doors opened and a young woman stepped out and approached the group solemnly as they cavorted. "Where've you _been_?" she asked Rita in a low voice. "You said you'd only be gone a couple of days, and the electric bill's due."

Rita squealed triumphantly and pulled a dull-eyed little boy forward. "Oh, SHIT, we had so much fun! We're goin' to Mexico next, I swear to God. An' see what I found; this is Bobby. He's gonna live with us!" She aimed the boy at one of the trailers and gave him a little push. "Go on in and git you sumpin' to eat." "Bobby" walked mechanically to the metal building without uttering a sound.

The young woman stared at Rita, flabbergasted. "Where'd you get him? You can't just kidnap a kid!"

"I didn't, we found him when the moon was full. He's one of us! He ran away from his old home, and now he's ours. God, El, don't be such an asshole. Look, I brought a Christmas tree, too!" Filling her arms with bundles, she brushed past the girl, who stared after her helplessly.

* * *

If it was possible, the trailer was even smellier than the car. Its living room had a big slippery couch and a big TV and a bunch of boxes, and that was all. Jordy sat down on the couch and tried to make himself invisible. He could see into a bedroom; there was a mattress on the floor and piles and piles of clothes. He wondered if he would have to sleep there.

MamaRita and Jeep and Richard and Toni and Barry went in and out of the trailer. Someone turned on the TV, and someone else started fiddling around in the kitchen. The girl from the other trailer came inside and watched them all, not saying anything. She looked a little like Rita, but she wasn't as old, and her boobs and her bottom weren't as big as Rita's _(Rita's a big hog and I wish she'd explode) _and she didn't have titty-pink lipstick smeared all over her mouth like Rita and Toni always did. She stood with her arms crossed tight, and they stayed crossed when she walked over to him.

"Hi." She didn't smile, but she sounded friendly. Her forehead looked worried. "Where you from?"

"Shut up," Jeep told her. "Quit fuckin' with him."

"I was just-"

Jeep grabbed her elbow and squeezed it hard. "Said shut UP." The girl looked mad and scared and clamped her mouth shut, and Jordy could guess what she was thinking.

_I hate him too, New Girl. I wish I was big enough to tie him up and call the police right in front of him, and he'd have to just sit there and watch me do it._

Jeep sat down on the other end of the couch and began flipping channels on the TV, and the new girl went to help in the kitchen. From the corner of his eye Jordy could see that she was still looking at him.

* * *

"Hey. It's me. I'm back in Roswell. How are things there?...Yeah...I'm gonna try south tomorrow; see if I can pick up anything...I will; you take care, too. Merry Christmas."

Oz hung up the payphone receiver and crossed the convenience store parking lot to his car. It was early afternoon now, Christmas Day, and already the sun was slipping, laying out long thin shadows as it dropped toward the horizon. Oz barely took notice of the holiday, but the celestial events weighed heavily on his mind.

Tonight was the first full moon.

The motels along the route out of Roswell looked tempting - the evening air would be chilly and he was weary to the point of exhaustion - but he couldn't risk being near people tonight, not when the emotional stress of losing Jordy might weaken his control. He drove for miles, searching for a suitable location. When he found it, an isolated area off a pig trail of a road with a lump of hill to serve as a screen, he parked the car and slid over into the passenger seat. He opened the door on that side, just a crack, so that the seal maintained contact (already he could feel the temperature dropping) but also so that the door would swing open easily should something heavy and frenzied bump against it. Earlier in the day he had considered the merits of locking himself up in the car, leaving the keys and some clothes outside where they wouldn't be lost or damaged if the change came. The car's interior would probably be destroyed, though, including essentials like the gearshift and steering wheel, and he doubted that the windowglass would be strong enough to contain him anyway. He also mulled over the tranquilizers, but past experiments had revealed that the after-effects made him dopey and useless for days. (Jordy'd begun to have that problem with them, too, Uncle Ken had reported in September, adding with grim humor, "Our little boy's growing up.")

Oz removed the lid from the Styrofoam ice chest in the back seat, allowing easy access to the butcher's bones and pounds of uncooked hamburger inside. He reached overhead and switched off the dome light to prevent the car's battery from draining. Then as the last of the sun's rays faded he reclined his seat, pulled a couple of blankets over himself, and began the meditation process by which the condition of Lycanthropy could sometimes be brought to bay.

It was going to be a hella long night.

* * *

Elsie D's night began as she watched her older half-sister, her brother-in-law, his three friends, and the little boy drop to their knees in the front yard.

The adults had been drinking and doping since late yesterday, and Rita in her semi-stoned state had forgotten to do anything more than set the plastic tree up and play with the buttons on the string of chaser lights, but Bobby hadn't seemed interested in Christmas, anyway. That came as a relief to Elsie D, because she was certain that the boy was not there of his own accord, and it would have been even worse if he'd been expecting Santa Claus to visit.

Santa hadn't arrived, but the moon had, full and fat, and Elsie sat on the bathroom countertop and watched through a tiny window as the six people gasped and lolled their heads and dug their fingers into the soil. Their joints creaked audibly, bones and tendons stretching, hair follicles kicking into overdrive. One of the trailers had been emptied once upon a time and holes drilled through the floor, the better to attach chains to the axles and shackle us up, my dear, but the wolves had long since stopped worrying about corralling themselves. ("_We just RUN, El, that's all; there's nothin' wrong with running. God, what do you think we do, chase people down the street and eat them? We're in the middle of fuckin' NOWHERE; where would we even FIND anyone to chase?") _Elsie D had sat this way in some fashion every month for as long as she could remember, watching the change take place, and every month she grew a little more tired and sick at heart. When everyone outside had galloped off into the darkness, she searched the trailers for phones and car keys, but Jeep had hidden both.

* * *

On December 27th Oz picked up the trail again. It lead south, as he suspected it would, and on a road outside of Carlsbad he caught Jordy's scent full and strong. It seemed to be everywhere, zigzagging all over the countryside, but there was no automobile exhaust smell with it and Oz had a good idea that his cousin had been on foot. The scent of the others was there, too; he hoped to God that Jordy hadn't been pursuing them. In the distance he could make out a cluster of mobile homes, and he drove toward them, dreading the carnage that he might find there.

He drew a breath of relief when he spotted people moving about between the houses - and then he saw that one of them was Jordy.

With very great effort he kept his car at the same speed, in the same direction, staring straight ahead as though his business lay well up the road. It was almost twenty minutes before he found a turnoff that took him back to town.

* * *

Richard burst into Rita's trailer so suddenly that Elsie D dropped the glass she was rinsing, shattering it in the sink. He'd been working on one of the car engines and his face and hands were smeared with Quaker State motor oil. "Cops comin' up the road. Shit."

"Noooooooo!" Rita wailed. She ran into one of the bedrooms and snatched up Jordy with surprising strength, and he instinctively began to struggle. "We got to hide, Baby, we got to hide, we got to hide, we got to hide," Rita babbled, her eyes bright with panic.

Richard caught Jordy's face in his hand. "Don't you make a sound, goddamnit," he hissed. He wheeled and grabbed at the air behind him and shouted, "ELSIE!" but the girl had already dodged him and shot out the front door, and was standing in the yard when the two law enforcement vehicles pulled up.

From the back seat of one of the cruisers, Oz sized up the houses' visible occupants: tall, scrawny, fortyish guy trying desperately to look like a Doobie Brother; shorter guy, younger, beefier, but somehow not as dangerous-looking as the scrawny one; thin young woman with a doleful face; older woman who'd apparently eroded her looks with hard partying and tried to trowel them back on with cosmetics.

The women looked scared. The men looked defiant. There was no sign of Jordy.

" 'Afternoon. We're from the sheriff's department," the lead officer announced as he approached them. "We've received a report that a missing child might have been spotted near here. Do you mind if we look around?"

The scrawny man shrugged. "Naw; go ahead."

"You have any children living here, sir?"

"Naw."

"Mind if we look inside the house?"

Another shrug. "Okay."

The officers fanned out, taking names, searching the cars and buildings. A knot of alarm began to grow in the pit of Oz's stomach. _They've stashed him someplace. Did they kill him? I don't smell any blood; did they choke him to death to keep him quiet?_

One by one the officers returned, shaking their heads at the sheriff, empty-handed. They glanced back at Oz with "we've done all we can, sir" expressions. The sheriff gave the suspects another appraising sweep, and then his body stiffened almost imperceptibly. Standing a step or two behind the others, the younger woman was tipping her head and cutting her eyes ever so slightly in the direction of the plastic skirting panels surrounding the underside of one of the trailers. _There,_ her face told them, _You need to look under there._

The sheriff clicked his flashlight back on and walked quietly around to the trailer's back door. There was a scraping sound of plastic being torn back, and then a screech of despair and a feminine voice howling, "NO, NO, NO, NO, NO, he's MIIIIIIIIIIIIIINE!"

The older woman and two men in the front yard made as if to bolt, and Oz grabbed the door handle. He was on the verge of leaping from the car and pouncing on the nearest suspect _(take out the scrawny guy; if he's down the others will give up) _when the deputies drew their guns and their handcuffs and convinced the three to change their minds. A man crawled out from under the trailer and lay on the ground obediently, but yowls and sobs continued to erupt from the hidden woman. The younger girl bit her lip, agonized, and called out, "For God's sake, Rita, let him go!"

A panel on the front side of the trailer suddenly bulged outward, and a child's hands popped out from under it and scrabbled frantically for a hold. Oz flung the car door open and hurled himself at the trailer. He got the panel off with one quick yank, exposing a small brown head and flailing arms. Jordy looked up at him and screamed. Something underneath the trailer began to drag him backward, and he screamed again. Oz hooked his arms around the boy's chest and gave another powerful yank, and pulled into view both his cousin and the lunatic clinging to his legs.

It took all four of the officers to peel Rita's hands from him.

When he was finally pried loose, Jordy lurched to his feet and began to run toward the road, as he'd imagined doing for weeks now: sneaking away while they weren't looking; running and running and running and running until he'd run all the way home. He made it as far as the end of the driveway.

_He's so small. He's still just a baby. Man, he can run like a rabbit!_ Oz hurried down the drive after the little boy and called out to him, "Jordan!"

Jordy staggered a few steps more, on leaden, aimless feet. He turned at the familiar voice, recognized the face _(DANNYDANNYDANNY)_; made a freakish inhuman noise in his throat and then he was scooped up into the safe, wiry arms of his older cousin. He wrapped his arms and legs around him like a human leech and mashed his face into his shoulder.

The little guy was filthy, sticky with dirt and reeking of pot and piss and shit and garbage and unwashed body.

Oz thought it was the sweetest smell in the world.


	6. Chapter 6

**Chapter 6**

"These mountains...they are alive?"

"How's that?"

"Is there turbulence beneath them - lakes of fire and liquid glass, hands that grasp at the heavens and fall back in failure. Power unfettered but for the weight of this stagnant crust."

"Y'mean volcanoes? Hell, no. Closest thing we've got to a volcano is Lolly Kimble winning Blackout at the Flamingo Bingo. That woman yells louder than a cow givin' birth to a porcupine."

"I have done battle in worlds where volcanoes exploded under our feet, and continents screamed. The air itself burned. Our glory was all-consuming."

"I'll bet ol' Lolly could've given those continents a run for their money."

"It was nothing you could imagine."

"I guess not...sounds like you miss it, though."

"I...miss it. Yes."

Mr. Burkle pulled a rectangular bale of hay from a stack in the barn and carried it to the building's lean-to, where he broke it into blocks in a trough.

"Fred drew her mama 'n me a little picture of what you used to look like. We were kinda curious - what were all those holes running down your chest for?"

"Egg cases."

"...Yeah, Trish told me I probably shouldn't ask."

"I have decided that I do not dislike this place. At times I find it pleasing. It has a desolate beauty."

"Thanks. We've always thought it was pretty nice, too."

"Why do you keep beasts of burden here? They seem to serve no purpose."

"Oh, Fred and her friends used to ride 'em for fun; now they're just living in retirement. Wouldn't be the same without a couple of old horses on the place."

"They are pets. I understand now. I too had pets. I would have Spike for a pet, but he has refused."

"I'll bet he has."

"Tonight is the primary feast night of your midwinter holy time. He said that this is when you will begin to open the offerings under the sacrificial tree."

"Yep, a few tonight, but most of them in the morning. We got a couple for you, too, if you want to drop by for a little while tomorrow."

"Your household pays me tributes! This pleases me greatly."

"We don't pay tributes to anyone but the Presbyterian Church and the IRS. These are _presents._ C'mon, it's getting close to supper time. I don't know how you got up there, but it's a good two-story fall off of that barn, and the roof's pretty slippery."

* * *

_It's almost like I never went away; like nothing bad ever happened. _Fred reveled in this night. The house was filled with people, neighbors and old acquaintances who drifted in and out on gusts of laughter. Candles burned in fat little jars. Plates of food, tamales and gingerbread and Durkee green bean casserole, performed daring feats of balance on outstretched, careless knees. Fred threaded her way to a folding table in the corner, where a noisy card game was in progress involving eighty-year-old Mr. Eberson, Spike, some guy in a Gimme cap whose name she couldn't remember, and Terry Watson. (She _did_ remember Terry, a flamboyant friend from high school now acknowledged by her parents' community as a notorious but tolerated homa-SEXshul.) She leaned over behind Spike and wrapped her arms around him, bussing him loudly on the cheek.

"Darling, where's your headdress?" Terry smiled. He was wearing one of those ridiculous headbands with a sprig of mistletoe suspended out in front of his forehead by a pipecleaner, and on anyone else it would have looked childish and idiotic. Terry wore it with aplomb.

"They say that mistletoe was sacred to the ancient Celtic tribes," Mr. Eberson noted. "It also played a part in the demise of the Norse deity Baldar, the beloved god of light. Got any threes, London?"

"Nope, you've already pinched 'em all. Go fish."

Fred grinned at a sudden inner voice and whispered into Spike's ear, "Illyria says that Baldar was a big wuss." She giggled as he barked out a laugh and almost knocked his drink over. The guy whose name she couldn't remember pushed his cap a little farther back on his head and looked confused.

"Go Fish? Hell, I thought we'uz playin' Hearts."

"That was last round, Mate. See, got it all right here on the little score pad. The one labeled 'Bridge,' except that I don't think even Watson's _that_ gay."

Fred pulled up a chair and sat down cross-legged in it and watched the game go on. Her eyes drifted to the window, past the porchlight and into an inky black point beyond it. _It's not The Void Black, though. Not Pylea Black, or Jasmine Black, or the black of Wolfram & Hart. This is __**Home**__ Black, and it's safe._

* * *

The nightmare announced itself in its usual fashion, with little spasms and gaspings and fingers clutching at the air. They weren't very frequent now for either her or Spike, but they hadn't relinquished their hold entirely. For Fred they took the form of dark rooms for which she could find no doorway, and on rare occasions sunlit fields in which she tried repeatedly to hide from the green-skinned people she knew were coming for her.

Spike's, she'd learned, were far worse. A mocking entity who took the shape of the dead. A thousand gibbering voices, some hurling righteous anger, others shrieking nonsense. Memories of childhood turned garbled and confusing. Sex and violence and rivers of gore. One that he'd begun to call "The Glass Ceiling"; in it he swam up from the bottom of a lake, but always hit a layer of ice at the surface. The ice never broke, no matter how hard he pushed at it, and the people he could see through it, the people walking across its top (he'd let a name slip once - Willow - and Fred suspected that Angel and Buffy walked there as well), never responded to him.

There were bad dreams rooted in loneliness and rejection, dreams of abandonment and loss of hope, and these she had more trouble getting out of him than the guilt-induced or frightening dreams. Now, hours after the Christmas Eve guests had departed and the world had gone to bed, she awoke to find him in the grip of one. He was weeping and grinding his teeth, and his fingernails had torn completely through the bedcovers.

"Spike." She kept her voice low; gave his shoulder a little shake. "Wake up."

He sat up suddenly with a hoarse cry, and would have knocked her sideways if she hadn't anticipated it and leaned out of the way. She reached for the nightstand lamp and turned it on as quickly as she could.

His body was sweating and trembling like a racehorse, the muscles drawn tight as bowstrings. Fred stroked her hand down his back in a soothing motion. "Shhhh. Shhhhh." For a moment she thought he was going to be sick, and then he squeezed his eyes shut and groped blindly for her.

"What was it about?" He was hugging her so hard that she had to wiggle her face up out of his chest to speak.

"The people. Ones I killed. Ones I tortured," he muttered into her hair.

"They know you're sorry. They know you'd make it right if you could." She believed that. She hoped that if she said it to him often enough, he'd believe it someday, too. They were quiet for several minutes, rocking each other, drawing comfort from the familiar ritual. Finally he straightened a little and drew a shaky breath. From next door came the sound of a car starting up, and a rooster in someone's backyard henhouse squawking in protest. "Bad dream's all over now," Fred murmured.

Spike gave a small, hollow smile. "'It faded on the crowing of the cock.'" At her questioning look he added, "_Hamlet_. Bit with Horatio and the king's ghost. 'Some say that ever 'gainst that season comes / Wherein our Savior's birth is celebrated, / The bird of dawning singeth all night long: / And then, they say, no spirit dare stir abroad: / The nights are wholesome; then no planets strike, / No fairy takes, nor witch hath power to charm, / So hallow'd and so gracious is the time.'"

Fred's eyes locked on his face, transfixed. Then without a word she pulled his mouth down to hers and cemented it there.

_Do you have any idea how much you move me, my darling?_

* * *

In the afternoon of December 27th, Oz loaded Jordy into his car and began the first leg of the journey home. Their late start was unavoidable; time-consuming necessities had had to be done: a trip to the hospital to clean Jordan up and examine him for injuries and signs of molestation (thankfully, there proved to be none of either), then to the sheriff's office for the regulation forms and statements. ("We've charged the five with kidnapping. I don't see any need to press charges on the young woman; according to the boy, she wasn't in on any of it, and she appears to have been sort of a hostage there herself.") Free now finally, they drove north to U.S. Highway 82, watching the sun and the clock on the dashboard.

"Will Mom be out of the hospital when we get back?" Jordy had asked the question over and over since their phone call to his father. Oz answered it again.

"Maybe. She's awake, but her head's still pretty sore." The abbreviated version of events he'd given his little cousin had not included that Uncle Ken had developed one hell of an infection from his cuts and was only just now getting out of the hospital himself, or that Jordy had clawed him to ribbons, or that Jordy had knocked Aunt Maureen down the stairs. ("She tripped and bumped her head while she was trying to scoot you back into the basement. Guess she should've put on a crash helmet first, huh?")

"Do you see a place to stay yet?" The kid was tense and worried, but he also looked ready to fall asleep standing up. Oz hoped that that would be the case all night.

"Yeah, I think down this way ought to work." They pulled off onto a deserted side road and found an abandoned house to park the car behind. Oz brought the blankets out and cracked the doors, just as he had the two previous evenings. He tucked the blankets around the child and turned off the dome light. "It won't feel cold for very long," he promised him. They settled back in their seats and watched through the windshield as the sun went down and turned into an orange smear on the western edge of the horizon.

"Did I miss Christmas?"

"No. It's still Christmastime."

The smear was gone. Oz began to hear a singing, high and primordial, not in his ears but in his brain. Drawing sensations ran up and down his body like electric currents. The air around him no longer felt comfortable, but thick and close, and he wanted to break out of the den and run...to_ run...feel the ground the ground the sniff the air can smell again everything clear want to EAT_


	7. Chapter 7

**Chapter 7**

"Spike." Warm breath was in his ear, pulling him from a sound sleep. He cracked his eyes the least bit, and saw that it was morning. A wet little tongue dipped hummingbird-like into the ear and small teeth tugged deliciously at his lobe. The enticing whisper came again.

"Want to see an old southern holiday tradition?"

Spike rolled onto his back to find Fred leaning over him in the bed, bracing herself on her palms, long brown strands of hair tickling his chest and shoulders, and he smiled in anticipation. "Mmmm, yeah. Is it nicer than mistletoe?" Then he saw the gleam of criminal mischief in her eyes. "Oh, god, what is it?"

"CHRISTMAS GIFT!" She screamed into his face. She vaulted across the mattress with a squeal of laughter, not quite kneeing him in the stomach, and galloped to the doorway, dragging most of the bedcovers with her.

"CHRISTMAS GIFT! CHRISTMAS GIFT!" Now her parents could be heard shouting the weird greeting from the other end of the house, and Spike wondered if the entire family had gone berserk. He sat up groggily and drew on a shirt and warm-up pants _(Bloody hell, where's she getting her energy?)_, and then Fred was back in the room, pulling him to his feet and down the hallway.

"Come ON! It's time to open presents!"

"I'm comin'. What the hell was that all about?"

"Whoever yells 'Christmas Gift' first on Christmas Morning wins."

"Wins what? A chorus of 'It's 5:00 A.M., shut the fuck up' from everyone else?"

"They don't win anything. It's just the tradition...only most people don't do it much anymore," she admitted.

"Small wonder."

It was fun, though, opening bundles with the Burkle clan. No sitting politely for this lot, passing out items one at a time like timid old ladies. They _attacked_ their tree, crawling around it on their hands and knees, tossing boxes and stockings back and forth with gusto, creating a snowstorm of wrapping paper. Nothing at all like the quiet Christmas mornings Spike remembered from his youth, although those had been good, too - woolen sock hanging from the bedpost, heavy with ribbon candy and oranges; sip of port with the grown-ups by the best parlor's fireplace; winding the big Swedish music box; watching Mother distribute gifts to the servants out in the hall.

He gave those long-ago days a mental "Cheers," and then he joined the mayhem on the floor.

* * *

At eleven o'clock Illyria opened her eyes.

"Happy Christmas! You're just in time. We've slaughtered a bird, not in your highness's honor, thanks anyway, and now we're gonna eat it and open the rest of the prezzies." Spike raised a glass to her from across the dining table. Illyria took stock of the room and then appraised the plate in front of her.

"Fred fixed that," Trish told her. "If there's anything on it that you don't like, or you want more of something, why, just help yourself. I cook a real good turkey and dressing if I do say so."

Illyria took a bite and swallowed. "During my reign it was a sacred privilege to remain in my presence while I was eating. My subjects brought me delicacies from the ends of the universe, and vied for my attentions. I was fed the comestibles of Anshar and Olympia."

"We used to do all our grocery shopping at the Piggly Wiggly."

Roger passed a bowl of mashed potatoes to his wife. "We put your presents over there under the tree, 'Lyria. You can open 'em now if you want to."

Spike and the Burkles continued to eat, and Illyria came to the conclusion that she was expected to retrieve the presents herself. She waded slowly through the shredded tissue and foil, knelt, and pushed back loose paper until she found several still-intact packages. In them she found: a soft chenille throw blanket; a set of nunchukas; a PlayStation2; a large bouquet of peacock feathers; and a Sea Monkey kit.

"We thought that video machine was something all three of you could use; it's got a DVD player 'n everything. Spike said you liked Crash Bandicoot, and there's a Grand Theft Auto game and a Mercenaries. We didn't get Final Fantasy 'cause I thought it looked kinda sissy." Fred's father paused to take a sip from an enormous glass of iced tea. "Now, those sea monkeys don't really wear little crowns like it shows on the box. We were gonna get you an ant farm but the post office couldn't deliver the ants on time, so you'll hafta take a raincheck."

Illyria stared at the fine print on the box.

"These are brine shrimp."

"Yeah, ain't that a kick in the pants? Where they got 'monkeys' outta that I'll never know."

Illyria opened her mouth to inform the shell's parents that she found shrimp tiresome and had no use for their world in microcosm. Then, for some reason she couldn't explain (and puzzled over later, floating through the Eternal Shrimp Dimension to see if that would provide an answer), she checked her words and said instead, "I thank you. For the shrimp. They will be fine shrimp."

* * *

The bulk of Christmas Night was spent snogging on the couch.

It was nice that the mister and missus retired to bed early, and that the telly was just loud enough to give them a bit of privacy, and that the long, slow, drugging kisses between mouthfuls of wine were so deep and heady that their tongues caressed places they hadn't known a tongue could reach. When finally kissing was not enough - "In the shower, I want you in the shower," - Spike got to his feet with a groan and hurried the bottle of wine back to the kitchen refrigerator.

When he returned, he discovered Fred lying on her back underneath the Christmas tree, her head and shoulders hidden by branches.

He squatted down beside her, amused and curious. "Thought we were gonna do it in the bathroom, Love."

Winifred smiled. "I had to do this first. I almost forgot." Her hands rested on her stomach, fingers interlaced. "When I was little I liked to turn off all the lights in the room and look up into the tree this way. Come on, try it. It's like magic from this angle."

"All right." He slid down next to her and wiggled onto his back, feeling a pleasant sense of deja vu - how often he had humored Dru this way, going along with some insane fancy that had struck her, usually something that only she could see.

"Isn't it wonderful? It's like you're one of the ornaments." Fred stared up into the tree's depths. Spike followed her gaze and discovered that she was right: your entire field of vision from here was filled completely by metallic sparklings and glowing colored bulbs and the dark, shadowy green of the branches and trunk, which rose up and up unendingly.

"Did you ever try this stoned?" he asked, meaning it as a joke.

"Yeah, but it wasn't nearly as good." She missed his surprised double-take, her eyes remaining fixed on the view overhead. "The nicest way is stone-cold sober. Then you know you're not just dreaming."

* * *

_Did I dream?_

Oz raised his head from the car's bucket seat and looked around him. It was daylight, the morning of the 28th, and the air was still chilled. Both of the car's doors were thrown wide open, and the ice chest had been emptied of the bones and hamburger and the chest itself chewed to pieces. Jordy was curled up in the passenger seat, bare-naked and shivering on top of the pile of blankets, and Oz found that he himself was in that condition as well. He tugged his own blankets out from under him and laid them over his little cousin, then hurriedly dressed and cranked the car, snapping the heat switch to "High."

Jordy stirred now, blinking. "We're okay," Oz told him. "Made it through the night. No more 'til next month." The meditation hadn't worked as well this time, but he hadn't really expected it to. He remembered snippets of the moon hours: showing Jordy the meat stash; herding him back towards the car _(den)_ whenever they strayed too far from it. He had managed to remain partly human, he thought.

They got back onto the highway once more. After several miles of silence Jordy spoke up.

"Those people were crazy."

"Pretty much," Oz agreed.

"Elsie D was okay. The rest of them were scary. They'll keep them in jail, won't they?" It was another question he'd asked repeatedly.

"Yeah." Oz had a nagging question of his own, one that continued to puzzle him. "Jord, what did they do when you changed?"

"I don't remember. They didn't say anything to me about it. They were always sleeping when I woke up; they always slept a long time in the mornings. Maybe they tied me up or something."

_A kid turning into a wolf hadn't scared them shitless? Had they been so drunk or so high that they hadn't even noticed for two nights in a row?_

Highway 82 to Alamogordo; Highway 70 to Las Cruces.

They were west of Las Cruces when the alternator went out.

* * *

"I think everyone really liked their presents this year," Fred announced. She maneuvered the van along Interstate 10, heading west back to Phoenix. Overcast weather with possible rain had helped them decide to start out during daylight, but to be on the safe side Spike had chosen to stay in the back seat with the windows comfortingly covered by black plastic trashbags.

"Yeah, the 'chuks weren't a bad idea after all. Gives Blue something to do with her hands."

"Uh-huh. And she's not as likely to break things with them. We can always get her the boomerang some other time."

A car came into view on the shoulder of the road. Its hood was up, and as they drew abreast of it Spike exclaimed in surprise and leaned forward.

"Fred, turn around. I know that bloke - the one just stuck his head under the bonnet. Back us up."

"What? I can't - wait, there's an underpass. Who is it?"

Spike broke into a chuckle. "Well, I'll be damned."

The van took an exit and circled back until it approached the stalled car again. It pulled up behind it, and Fred leaned out her driver's side window. "Hey, y'all want a lift?"

"Yeah, thanks." Oz slammed the hood down and motioned Jordy out of the car. He opened the van's side door and boosted the boy inside, then climbed in after him and started to add, ""If you can give us a ride to a repair shop, that'd be great."

He stopped in mid-sentence and stared over the middle seat. And from the back of the van a familiar face grinned and asked cheerfully, "How are things in the land of loup-garou, Osbourne?"


	8. Chapter 8

**Chapter 8**

"Spike."

Oz's voice was calm, his expression still mild, but Spike saw the way his entire body stiffened and the phrase "fight or flight" came immediately to the vampire's mind.

_Dunno who the kid is, but I'll wager if I so much as leaned in his direction Dog Boy'd go for my throat. Might even be able to do me some serious damage. Good on you, Mate._

"You're Oz from Sunnydale?" Fred chirped, visibly pleased and excited. "Angel and Cordelia told me so much about you! So has Spike! Although, well, a lot of that was about you guys trying to assassinate each other." She laughed and rolled her eyes. "It's so nice to meet you! I'm Fred."

Oz watched her carefully, keeping Spike in his peripheral vision. He took the slender hand she offered.

_Smells human enough. Feels too warm to be a vampire - could have had her hands in front of the heater vents, though. _

"You from L.A.?" he asked.

"Not really, I mean not anymore. We're on our way back to Arizona."

Jordy's face lit up. "I live in Arizona."

"You do? Well, if you can't get your car fixed, maybe we could give you a ride home." Her smile for Jordy was kind, and Oz wondered what she was doing traveling with a vamp. _Guess he's still harmless. Initiative equipment must be built to last._ He relaxed - very slightly - and looked back at Spike.

"So, the chip thing still working out for you?"

"Worked out fine. In fact, I upgraded to a soul."

There was something in his demeanor in spite of the flippant words that made Oz realize that Spike was absolutely serious. A subtle undercurrent of maturity and sadness, almost but not quite hidden. From the driver's seat Fred chimed in, "It's true, he really does. He found a magician who was willing to re-soul him if he went through all kinds of awful tests and things, and he passed them with flying colors!"

"Black and blue's not exactly flying, Pet."

"It doesn't matter; you passed them and you earned your soul back." To Oz she added, "And then he stopped an apocalypse." She rattled off a recap of Sunnydale's final history that lasted a good three minutes. When she was done she looked back at Spike proudly. Oz gazed from one to the other.

"Huh."

"That's his impressed face," Spike said to Fred.

"I'd heard a little about the cave-in...Willow called my parents right after it happened and left them a message that everyone was all right. They'd seen the footage on the news. Not every day the ground collapses and swallows an entire town."

"Everyone _wasn't_ sodding 'all right.' Handful of girls got killed in that battle. Anya was one of 'em," Spike snapped.

Oz's brow knit in surprise. "No, she never mentioned that. Maybe she just meant everyone my folks knew. Man, that's rough. I didn't know Anya that well, but..." His words trailed off sadly.

"Lorne met some of the demons who'd evacuated to Los Angeles," Fred remembered. "They all said they'd felt the same thing Spike had; that something huge and dangerous was coming out of the earth, and they wanted to get out of its path. 'From beneath you, it devours.' "

Oz glanced down at his cousin. "I think Jordy felt it, too. A few months before the quake he started keeping all his toys on top of the furniture. He said he was afraid that something was going to reach up through the floor and eat them."

"Young'un's a bright lad. Took the adult humans almost up until curtain time to notice." Spike shook his head with exasperation at the memory. "World's on the verge of exploding, but buggar all as long as Old Navy is still having a sale."

* * *

The casualties, Oz learned to his sorrow, had kept mounting: Doyle; Joyce; Tara; Wesley; Cordy; Jonathan. The last few miles into Las Cruces were solemn ones.

The one repair shop that was not too busy to take a look at the car was a grimy little building, staffed by a grimy little man. Fred bought a couple of sodas and some candy bars and took Jordy outside to stretch their legs, while Oz made arrangements for a tow truck. "Looks like rain," the grimy little man observed. "You boys were goddamn lucky you didn't get stuck in a thunderstorm sittin' out in that busted car." He ambled over to the large plate glass window in the front of the office and peered at the threatening skies. A fat little Corgi dog snored on its back underneath the window like a sausage, all four feet sticking carcass-like in the air, and an orange cat groomed itself on a shelf stocked with bottles and cans of automotive fluids until the mechanic clapped his hands at it and called out, "Get away from that antifreeze!"

Oz took a seat beside Spike in a row of plastic chairs. "Nice pets," he commented.

"Yeah, they're okay," the mechanic agreed. "Cat's a pretty good mouser. Ya just gotta remember to keep the litter pan way up where the dog can't reach it. Ain't nothin' a dog'll lap up faster'n a fresh cat turd."

Oz nodded politely and said nothing. Spike said nothing either, but quickly turned his head away, put a hand over his tightly-clamped mouth, and stared off into the distance, shaking in a palsy of silent laughter.

When the mechanic wandered out into the garage, he wiped his eyes and finally brought the insane giggling under control. "Oh, shit...Christ in a friggin' sidecar. Sorry about that, Mate."

"No problem." Oz shrugged. On the other side of the plate glass window Fred and Jordy came into view, moving in tandem in some kind of skip-step dance and laughing. "Fred seems like a pretty cool person."

"She's the best. She's..." Spike struggled to find the right words.

Oz studied her through the window. "Like The Professor and Mary Ann fused into one entity, and Fred was born?"

"That about covers it."

"Sane, smart, and nice. Gotta say, it's a step up from your former girlfriends."

Fred's voice filtered through the glass in a singsong cadence - "Whatch-you-steppin'-in?" - and was followed by Jordy's joyful response: "Bull-SHIT!"

Oz slouched back in the hard little chair and rested his ankle on his knee. "Sorta curious...why'd you want your soul back? I mean, for a vampire, that's kind of out there."

A shadow seemed to fall across Spike's face. "Hard to explain...I did some things I wasn't proud of, an' I didn't want to do them again. And I thought it's what Buffy wanted- "

He stopped, realizing that he'd revealed more than he'd intended. He had a feeling that Oz had caught the import of the words, but if so, the taciturn werewolf didn't show it.

"You know what it's like, Osbourne," Spike spoke up again suddenly. "Not knowing where you fit in. Feelin' the predator in you, knowing it's part of you. And knowing that no matter what you do or how hard you try, to most of the world you'll always be a monster."

"I know what it's like," Oz said quietly. He looked out the window again. "So does Jordy. He's one, too - a werewolf. He got bitten when he was only a year old. We think maybe it was some kid in his day care; we never did figure out who. A year later he bit me."

Spike's eyes widened, fascinated. "What do you do with him every month?"

"Phenobarbitol's always worked before; it doesn't stop the morphing, but it lets him sleep through it. It's starting to lose its effectiveness, though."

"What about you? Seem to recall you learned some kind of yoga/tambourine-banging something or other that stopped it."

"Yeah, it does the job pretty well. And a couple of years ago I found an Inuit village up in Canada where over half of the population are werewolves. They've been that way for generations. They can morph whenever they want; not just during a lunar cycle. They showed me how to do it, too - it's pretty amazing; you can freeze it in mid-morph, so you've got some of the strength and the teeth and claws, but you're still able to talk. It also resolves issues of nakedness and non-opposable thumbs."

Rain began falling in earnest now, splattering on the roof and the parking lot. Fred and Jordy came inside, flinging water droplets from their arms. The wrecker and the disabled car also arrived, and the grimy little mechanic tinkered under its hood for a bit and then announced, "Gonna have to order a part."

"Are we going to get to go home today?" Jordy asked in a small voice.

"We'll take you home, Honey," Fred promised. "Oz, we'll drive you to Phoenix. Jordy said that's where you were headed, and it's right on our route; we're going to Ashcraft - that's just north of Phoenix, not much more than a wide spot in the road, really- "

"Oh, I know Ashcraft. Jordy uses the pediatrician there."

Spike chuckled. "Small world, in'nit? Guess you know about the h-e-l-l-m-o-u-t-h there, too."

"Yeah, I've heard a few rumors."

Later, when they had darted out to the van and settled inside, Jordy looked up at Spike blandly.

"I can spell, you know."

* * *

Near dusk on the evening of the 27th, it was determined that the broken water main near the jail would make it impractical to keep prisoners there overnight. Rita, Jeep, Richard, Toni, and Barry were handcuffed and loaded into two squad cars in preparation for driving them to another holding facility. They went peacefully, even smiling a little.

The officers in charge of the deliveries were later found taking cover behind a dumpster, weapons drawn and almost emptied, whispering hysterically into their radios for backup and swearing that the smashed-out doors of the empty squad cars were caused by their vanished prisoners turning into giant hairy animals.


	9. Chapter 9

**Chapter 9**

After the deputy brought her back to the trailers - after the frisking, the questioning, the Ride To The Station To Get This Thing Sorted Out - Elsie D curled up in the corner of what had been the living room of one of the mobile homes. The room was empty and cold and echoing, ugly paneling staining the walls, and she sat on the floor with her knees drawn up and her head in her hands, looking at the holes in the floor where the shackles were supposed to have been attached, and a burning sensation grew in her eyes and in the pit of her stomach. She sat there until the light grew too dim to see the holes anymore. Night was coming, and she could hear ghosts begin to creep through the walls.

Suddenly she stood up and stumbled out of that trailer and ran across the yard to one of the furnished ones, the one where she slept. In the tiny bedroom she pulled the drawers out of the bureau and dumped their contents onto the middle of her mattress. She added some clothes from the closet, and pulled the four corners of the blanket together over the pile. She tied the corners into a knot and carried the bundle out to the tomato-color Camaro, and then returned a few minutes later with the television. That bundle was a little harder to manage - the set was a 19-inch screen, and heavy - but she made it to the car without dropping it, and loaded it into the passenger seat.

The Camaro's keys were in her pocket; Jeep hadn't confiscated them because the car currently had no battery. Working with a flashlight and a wrench, Elsie removed the battery from one of the keyless cars and transferred it to the Camaro's engine. Clouds obscured the moonlight, and in the dark her trembling hands dropped the wrench twice. The glow from the flashlight was growing feeble by the time she found the siphon hose and ran it into the tank of the donor car. Squatting underneath it, she sucked on the end of the hose until she tasted gas and saw fluid moving down the tube, and then she clamped her thumb over the end of the hose and stuck the end into a plastic gasoline jug. The ground against her knees was cold and abrasive as she worked, and she ran a chilled arm across her face and rubbed away tears, unaware that she'd been weeping steadily.

When she filled the Camaro's gas tank to her satisfaction, she gathered equipment - more tools, a jumper cable, the siphoning jug and hose - and piled them in the car's floorboard. She slid into the driver's seat. Drew a deep breath. Turned the key in the ignition.

Nothing.

Elsie mentally ticked off all the possibilities. She threw the door open, yanked up the car's hood, examined her work. One of the battery's terminals, she realized, had a thin coating of acidic corrosion. She went to the kitchen of one of the trailers and came back out with a can of Coca-Cola. Popping the top, she took a sip, and poured the rest carefully over the terminals of the battery. A white, angry foam boiled up as the soda began to eat away the acid crust, and with a stick and a cup of water Elsie tried to wash the terminals clean. One particularly stubborn bit of crud refused to let go, and she was forced to disconnect a cable to get at it. She tapped on it patiently...and a sound of barking came up the road.

_It can't be them. _

_They're locked up; they're not strong enough to break a jail door. _

_Oh God._

Elsie pounded frantically on the terminal, and the errant crust dislodged and dropped into the dark depths of the engine. The barking was moving closer. Elsie twisted the cable back into place as fast as she could, clawing at it, her breath coming in sobs.

She could see them now at the end of the driveway.

She slammed down the hood and flung herself behind the wheel.

_startstartstart_

The motor roared to life, and with a scream Elsie yanked the gearshift and mashed the accelerator and the Camaro shot across the yard, spraying gravel. She careened down the driveway, steering by sheer memory, too panicked to think of turning the headlamps on. The clouds broke, washing everything in a sudden spill of light from the moon. As the car shot past the pack she saw shadowy bodies leap and heard yelps of surprise. Then she was on the paved road, and then the highway, and then, finally, her heart eased back down out of her throat and resumed beating.

* * *

Between Las Cruces and Phoenix the conversation in the Ashcraft van included the following topics, in no particular order:

Dragonball Z

Wolfram & Hart

Advanced Computer Hacking

Music Theory

Algorithms

The Rhythm Method ("Uh, guys, he can spell,")

_Soap Opera Digest_

English And American Football, Comparative Pansyness Of

Pylea

The Initiative

Food In Tibet

Mexico, Our Neighbor To The South

Rain continued to fall. Jordy swung his dangling feet in Fred's shuffle dance and murmured singsong under his breath, "If it weren't for the Cotton-Eyed Joe/ I'd 'a been married long time ago/ I'd 'a been married long time ago..."

Then the van entered the Phoenix city limits, and suddenly he scooted forward as far as his safety belt would allow. The animal whine that issued from his throat startled the adults. His small nostrils flared, and he gripped the seat in front of him and craned his neck to peer through the windshield. "Calm down, Jord," Oz said softly. "We're almost there." Jordy glanced over at him and then returned his eyes to the road. Houses, empty lots, commercial buildings, more houses...

The rain had thinned to a light mist when the van pulled onto the grounds of a hospital. Jordy's eyes were everywhere, waiting for the slow grownups to park and get out and crawl

_(Hurry __**UP**__)_

down the sidewalk to the building's front doors.

An elderly little volunteer at the reception desk looked up from her paperback novel and nodded at them, smiling at Jordy. Oz felt the boy's shoulder muscles twitch under his hand as they crossed the lobby and rode the elevator to the upper floors. The ride took forever, each numbered button seeming to hoard the light before grudgingly allowing it to pass on to the next number.

On the sixth floor the car softly bounced to a stop. The doors slid open with a hiss, and Jordy inhaled sharply and darted down the corridor, following his nose. One doorway. Two. Three. At the fourth one he wheeled...

"MOMMY!"

...and threw himself into the arms of his mother and father.

* * *

Fred and Spike took a seat on a bench outside Maureen Osbourne's hospital room and listened to the sounds of reunion.

"Bless his little heart," Fred sighed. "He told me about being abducted. He must have been scared to death. I told him how it had happened to me, too, and it seemed to make him feel a little better somehow. Misery loves company, I guess."

Oz came out of the room and joined them in the hallway. His face was visibly brighter. "Aunt Maureen's being released day after tomorrow, and we're gonna have our family Christmas then." He paused, and then said quietly, "Listen, you guys have been lifesavers. If there's ever anything we can do for you..."

Spike considered. "Might bag me an otter on one of your next calls of the wild. Only so many ways to spice chicken blood before it starts tasting like chicken piss."

A flicker of a smile crossed Oz's lips. His eyes met those of the vampire, and Fred saw something pass between the two men, a kenning, something so subtle that she wondered if either of them were even consciously aware of it. A line from Rudyard Kipling's _The Jungle Book_ popped into her head: _We be of one blood, ye and I._ She looked at Oz warmly. "We were happy to do it. You just go on back in there, and have fun. Give Jordy a hug for us."

Oz nodded. "Take it easy, then. Tell Angel I said hey."

They parted company, Spike draping an arm around Fred's neck as they walked back to the elevators. An orderly passed them pushing a biohazard waste cart and Spike gazed after it wistfully. _God, but that smells delicious. Must'a had a bleeder somewhere; changed some bandages. Shame to throw 'em out like used tea bags._

He heaved a gusty sigh.

* * *

In Ashcraft the rain had ceased completely, giving anyone at their windows in the 1200 block of Copely Street a much better view of the thing on the sidewalk. It was thin, nude, hairless, pale as death, and quite human in appearance until one came to the face, where the eyes were wide and vacant and the lower jaw slammed open and shut, open and shut, _. _It walked as fast as a normal man can run, and it came relentlessly, and running ahead of it was a little girl. She looked back over her shoulder at it, stumbling a little, then lunged forward with a renewed burst of speed. Crossing the road at Copely and Ninth, she darted behind the Red Dot Washeteria.

The thing followed. In the bluish light of the streetlamps it saw the girl standing, trapped by an eight-foot-tall wooden fence. It came on at a walk-run. The girl stood motionless...and then suddenly began a little boogie dance. Her expression as solemn as an owl's, she waved her arms in cheerleader cadence and chanted, "U-G-L-Y, you ain't got no alibi, you' ugly - you' ugly."

"GOT HIM!" Gunn's shout of triumph interrupted Thu's performance. From out of the shadows he and Paloma had sprung to their feet on either side of the creature and looped a wire around its neck. They dropped to their knees, using their combined weight to pull the thing off balance and bear it to the ground. Thu snatched a hatchet from Gunn's hiding place and swung it over her head.

"Watch your hands," Paloma warned. They loosened their holds on the wire and drew their hands back, and the hatchet whistled down and lopped off the creature's head. It bounced into the air with a thin spray of clear fluid and rolled a few feet away. Thu, Gunn, and Paloma all scrambled after it as if it were a prize pinata, ignoring the body which had stood up and was staggering around blindly. They squatted on the ground and gripped the severed head by its ears, pinning it against the pavement, keeping their fingers well away from the still-snapping set of teeth. Gunn peered into its nostrils with a flashlight and began probing there with a long pair of tweezers.

"Can you see it?" the chupacabra asked him.

"Uh-uh. Damn thing keeps jerkin' around. It's like a fuckin' nutcracker!" He glanced up in Thu's direction. "Sorry."

"Pottymouth," Thu grunted. "Oh, shitass, can't we just break its jaw off?"

A little squeal of automobile brakes in the road went unnoticed. From that automobile, Spike and Fred took in the weird tableau behind the laundromat.

After a moment Spike got out and strolled over.

"You can pick your friends," he recited, "And you can pick your nose. But you can't pick your friend's nose."

The little slayer broke into giggles. Paloma grinned. "Season's Greetings to you, too, Asshole. You gonna give us a hand with this thing?"

Spike regarded the champing jaws warily. "Why don't you just smash it to bits and be done with it?"

"Can't. There's a little herb bundle up its nose that-" The body stumbled against Paloma and she pushed it away impatiently with her foot, sending it blundering into the fence. "That has to be taken out in one piece. Otherwise the rest of it'll just grow a new head."

"Oh." Spike nodded toward Gunn and the tweezers. "Well, that explains Saint Dunstan." He knelt beside them and stuck the blunt end of the hatchet into the mouth and held it there. Thirty-two little square teeth ground and clattered on the metal. "Any more of these about, or just the one?"

"This is the only one we've seen so far." Gunn lowered down to his knees and elbows and prodded inside the nasal cavity again. "We're tryin' to track down the dickhead that created it. We think Pale Rider here may have been swiped from a medical college."

"Is it safe to come out?" Fred called. She hung from the driver's side window and waved. "Did you have a good Christmas?"

"Oh my god, yes. I got a cell phone and the prettiest leather jacket. There is NO WAY I'm wearing it patrolling." Thu wiped the back of her hand across her sweatshirt, leaving a wet smear. Gunn gave a sudden relieved gasp and held up the tweezers with a minute wad of thread and twigs clutched in its tip.

The manic jawbone went limp.

The body fell flat on its back.

Paloma studied the head, then picked it up and held it in front of her own with the jaw sagging open and a palm against each cheek. "Hey, look," she said cheerfully. "_The Scream._"

* * *

**Author's note: Dunstan was a British saint, and the subject of the nursery rhyme, "Saint Dunstan, as the story goes / Once pulled the devil by his nose / With red-hot tongs, which made him roar / That could be heard ten miles or more."**


	10. Chapter 10

**Chapter 10**

Hospital cafeterias are blessedly quiet at night. Oz took a cup of coffee to one of the small tables there and rested, closing his eyes against the overhead light panels. Little waves of numbing warmth washed through his brain, lulling, lulling. The physical and emotional roller coaster of the past thirty-six hours was catching up with him, and he wanted nothing more now than to find a bed somewhere and curl up in it...

A woman's voice jerked him awake.

"Excuse me."

A girl was standing a few feet away from him, watching him nervously. Around his own age, he guessed; blonde, small, pretty - or would be if it weren't for the tense, pinched look on her face and the dark circles under her eyes. Her arms were crossed tightly across her stomach, as if she were trying to hold herself in one piece. The clothes she wore looked like they'd been wallowed in.

"You're Bobby's family, aren't you?" Her voice was thin and rushed, pushing the words out. "I saw you coming out of his mama's room. I called all the hospitals in the phone book and they said she was here. I heard the deputies say she lived in Phoenix."

"His name's Jordy." He stared at the young woman, finally recognizing her. "What are you doing here?"

"I have to tell you something. My sister and her friends broke out of jail last night. I don't know if you know that. You need to tell the police here so they can guard you. Rita may try to steal B- Jordy back."

Oz was on his feet in one fluid movement. The girl pressed on.

"I don't know if they're in a car. They know how to steal 'em. The cops may have picked them up by now...you need to call."

"I will." Shit. The nightmare was stirring to life again: _Psycho Rednecks Part 2,_ starring the thing under the trailer. He pushed his chair back and started for the door to the lobby, when the girl called after him.

"Wait. There's something else."

She dropped her eyes to his feet, and furrowed her brow until she looked almost vampiric.

"You know about Jordy? How he gets sometimes - when the moon's full?"

She raised her head again. "They do it, too."

"They're werewolves." Oz said the words flatly. It made sense now. Lost pup in the wilderness, disoriented and frightened, tagging at the heels of a pack until it accepted him. The stuff Disney films were made of, if Disney didn't mind Bambi and Dumbo developing bloodlusts.

Maybe it wasn't Jordy who killed the hunter Thanksgiving Night, after all.

"Yeah. And they found him in this town, so they know to look for him here."

Oz shook his head in bewilderment. "Why do they want him so badly?"

"It's Rita. The others wouldn't care, but Rita wants him and Jeep - her husband - he likes Rita to be happy, and the other three go along with whatever Jeep and Rita want." She took a step closer. "We need to call."

* * *

Oz placed the receiver back onto the phone's cradle slowly. "They're loose."

The girl - Elsie-something - looked sickened but not surprised. Around them the hospital's night shift moved to and fro, in and out of the lobby, up and down the lifts. The little volunteer receptionist adjusted her glasses and began a new paperback.

"That was the captain. He said he could assign some officers to take turns staying with us at my uncle's house, but he thinks a safer bet might be for us to just get out of town for awhile. I think so, too. Can your sister morph whenever she wants to?"

ElsieSomething shook her head. "You mean change? I don't think so. I don't think any of them can; I mean, I've never seen them. They never told me they could. Just when the full moon's out."

"Good. That should buy us a little time."

"They'll follow you."

"I know a safe place. It's with people who are used to dealing with werewolves. I doubt that the Phoenix P.D. issues silver bullets." Oz's gazed turned to Elsie D. He studied her, taking in the rumpled clothes, unwashed hair, and haggard expression. "What about you? Where are you going to go?"

"I don't know. Away from here, too, I guess. I've got some money I been stashin' away for awhile."

"Where'll you stay tonight?"

"In my car."

She could be lying, of course. For all he knew she could be a werewolf herself. But she'd shown them where Jordy was, and if Rita & Co. could trail them by scent it would happen with or without the girl around.

"Look, if you want to come with us..." he said, finally. "They're sending an officer over here now to watch my aunt's room. You're welcome to stay, too. It won't be all that comfortable, but it can't be any worse than sleeping in your car."

"Okay." The death grip she held herself in slackened a little - a very little. "Okay."

The word came out like a sigh.

* * *

"Home again, home again." Fred flopped onto her back across the bed of the little teepee-shaped motel room. "Jiggedy-jig." The place had the odd, cool, plastic smell that sometimes manifests in clean rooms that have been closed and undisturbed for long periods. Without bothering to sit up, she shucked off her clothing down to her panties, tugged the covers back, and slid underneath them. "I sure am tired of driving."

Spike nodded in agreement. He made a trail of clothes from the door to the bed and arrived on his side of it with nothing left but a cigarette and an ashtray. He lit the cig with a matchbook from the bedside table, pushed his pillow against the headboard, leaned back against it, and took a long, lovely drag. As he smoked, he looked around the room thoughtfully.

"Wish I could give you a better home than this," he said. "Something with more than one room an' a loo. Proper kitchen, lots of closets, nice big fireplace..."

"My parents' house?"

"Somethin' like that, yeah." The end of the cigarette glowed and moved in the darkness like a lazy firefly.

"Spike, I lived in a _cave_ for five years. I used to DREAM of having something as nice as this room. And even the cave would've been okay if you'd lived there with me. I used to get so lonely." In the shadows she found his free hand and held it to her face; pressed the rough pad of his thumb against her mouth. "You take good care of me."

His smile came quicksilver, tightened angles of his cheeks catching the pale windowlight as if they were mirrors. It wasn't many people could render him speechless, but this one - oh, this one had a knack for it, bowling him arse over tits and leaving a great pool of Happy in her wake. He moved her bedcovers down a bit and took a soft breast in his hand and massaged it slowly. Watched her eyelids droop and the tobacco smoke curl.

Jumped almost out of his skin when the phone rang.

"AAGH! Christ! What the hell?"

Fred pulled herself upright as they both fumbled for the screaming instrument, Spike almost losing the cigarette in the blankets. Fred located both simultaneously, taking care to stick the right one up to her ear.

"Hello? ..._Oz?_...Wait - Wait a minute, slow down."

Beside her Spike murmured, "Slow down? If OZ slowed down any more he'd decompose."

"Oh, my god...no, no, you're right...no, it's okay, of course you can; when are you leaving?...Have you still got our addresses?...Okay. Okay. Don't worry about it. I'm sure everything will be fine." She hung up the telephone and turned to Spike's questioning gaze.

"Break out Mama's sterling silver butter picks. Jordy's kidnappers are free-range werewolves."

* * *

Clothes, meds, and some favorite Christmas ornaments filled the trunks of the Osbourne family's two vehicles. The packing was done hurriedly, no one wanting to linger for fear of what might be watching them from the hedges and parked cars with spying, bestial eyes. Elsie D pulled up at the curb in front of Jordy's house, returning from a trip for gas at the convenience store two blocks away. Oz crossed the yard and leaned down to her opened driver's-side window. She'd cleaned up a little at the hospital, and pulled her hair back into a semblance of a ponytail. Her hands tightened and loosened, tightened and loosened on the steering wheel in a strained rhythm. Oz took in the enormous TV beside her.

"Didn't want to miss your shows?"

"I didn't know how long my money'd hold out. I brought it to sell if I need to. They'll give you about twenty or twenty-five dollars for them at the pawn shops." Her face was still rigid with tension. He noticed a newly-opened bottle of Maalox between her knees.

"Are you all right?"

She nodded and shut her eyes.

"Okay, then. Just follow us, and if we get separated you've got the directions and the map. If you need to stop, honk." He watched her for a moment. "You sure you're all right?"

"Yeah. I'm just tired." She looked up at him with round, pale eyes in a haunted face. "Thanks for letting me come."

"...You're welcome."


	11. Chapter 11

**Chapter 11**

Michael watched from the shelter of his porch as the newcomers' vehicles pulled up along the curb in front of his house. The house was old, a hundred years at least; a big brick foursquare with numerous battle scars but a welcoming face nonetheless, a house that rolled with the punches of whatever Nature and the supernatural threw at it and then landed again sturdily on its feet.

Anxiety came before the cars in hot, choppy waves. It prickled across Michael's mind, and he pitied the people inside the cars before he even saw them. He could see them now: a middle-age man and woman emerged from the first, pale of skin and slight of build. A somewhat younger couple came out of the second, followed by a short, slender youth in his early twenties and an elementary school-age little boy. _They must be our Romulus and Remus,_ Michael guessed. The third car produced a single young woman, also early twentyish. She fell in line a few paces behind the others, but the young man nudged her ahead of him and took the rear position himself, looking cautiously down both sides of the street and around the neighbors' yards.

_This one's the family's protector. The two other men are older and heavier but they rely on this one; they all rely on him._ As they came up the sidewalk the older men and women formed a phalanx around the little boy, almost obscuring him from view. They looked at the big, solid house desperately, and then they looked at Michael.

He adjusted his tie and held out his hand.

"Please, come in."

* * *

Jordy liked this house. He liked the bedroom that he and his parents would share, and the tiny little closets, and the bathroom with the weird shower that looked like a birdcage. There was a staircase with a bannister that you could slide down the way kids did on old movies; Mr. Wight said he didn't mind Jordy sliding down it if Jordy's parents didn't mind. (Mr. Wight also said that _he_ slid down it a couple of times right after he bought the house and moved in.)

The best thing was the Christmas tree. It was the strangest one that Jordy had ever seen; not green but _silver,_ with needles made out of aluminum foil stuff and branches that ended in big flowery pompoms. Mr. Wight had found it in the attic a long time ago and said that it was as old as he was. You didn't put light strings on it because of all the metal sticking out, but that was okay because Mr. Wight had something even better: a lamp that you set on the floor, with a plastic plate in front that was green and yellow and blue and red and turned in a circle, and that made the tree look green and yellow and blue and red. Your hand turned all those colors when you held it in front of the lamp, too.

There were some new boxes of glass balls, and a dancing Santa doll who wore sunglasses like Danny's, and an angel chime that ran on little candles. Mom told Mr. Wight that he shouldn't have gone to all that trouble, and Mr. Wight said that it wasn't any trouble; he had gotten them On Clearance. "Will this tree do?" He had asked Jordy. Jordy had answered, "YEAH! I _love_ silver!" and Mom and Mr. Wight had gotten real strange looks on their faces when he said that. Then Mr. Wight said that Jordy could put the Santa doll and his mom's manger set anywhere he wanted, and that in a couple of days it would be New Year's Eve, and Santa Claus always visited lots of houses then ("He goes all over Russia on New Year's, and Scotland too, I think.")

Jordy didn't really believe in Santa Claus anymore, but there were lots of things that not everybody believed in, and it didn't mean that those things weren't around somewhere. There was a poem book at home, one with neat drawings of ships and birds and crazy old men, and one of the drawings had a verse under it that Jordy liked to read when he wanted to scare himself. It was the picture that had scared him at first - a guy staring bug-eyed at a bunch of sailor ghosts - but as he got older and learned more and more words, the verse began to be spooky, too:

_Like one, that on a lonesome road  
Doth walk in fear and dread,  
And having once turned round walks on,  
And turns no more his head;  
Because he knows, a frightful fiend  
Doth close behind him tread._

"Go away, Poem." Jordy didn't want to scare himself right now. There was enough scary around already - he knew that Rita and her friends had snuck away from the police somehow - ESCAPED PRISONERS! - and he had heard his parents and aunt and uncle whispering that the escaped prisoners had the same thing that he and Danny had ("lycanthropy"; it sounded like "cancer" but they'd assured him that it wasn't), and it meant that when the moon was full they'd be super strong and grow claws and fangs and be a-

_I DON'T WANT TO BE A WEREWOLF!_

He pushed the thought out of his head. This was an okay place to live until the police caught the Escaped Prisoners again. Jordy began to hum as he arranged the decorations on the tree, and he wondered what Santa Claus would bring him.

* * *

Michael turned on the television to prevent the child from hearing what he didn't need to hear, and joined the other adults at the dining room table. Take-out chicken and mashed potatoes lay mostly untouched on their plates. Maureen moved fretfully from her chair to the living room door and back, trying to watch Jordy and keep up with the discussion at the same time.

"I told the police here about what's happened, and what kind of weapons they'll need. They didn't argue. Phoenix law enforcement is a different story, of course, but whoever picks them up should be safe until January 24th, unless they decide to bite..." Michael looked over at the young blonde woman, the one who'd run away from her sister. "Have they ever done anything like that? Bitten someone out of spite or anger?"

Elsie D had taken a seat at the far end of the table, trying, it seemed, to keep out of the way. She swallowed hard and looked uncertain.

"I don't know. I don't think so. They never tried to bite _me._"

"Actually...I think they have." Oz worked his fork slowly back and forth between his fingers. "I don't mean they've bitten you; I mean they may have killed. A human. A guy was found murdered outside of Phoenix in one of the same locations where I tracked Jordy and your family. He was pretty chewed up."

Elsie D's face turned ashen, and she winced and gripped her stomach. Oz's father and mother exchanged a glance. They were not without sympathy for the girl - God knew this thing was hell to live with - but...

"Miss...we appreciate what you did for our nephew, but you understand that if there's only one way left to stop your sister - if she attacks..."

"You'll have to kill her." Elsie looked up at Mr. Osbourne quietly. "You'll likely have to kill them all."

He nodded. "I'm sorry."

Elsie nodded too, dismally. After a moment Michael cleared his throat and continued. "If they can follow a scent as well as Daniel was able to, it's very possible that they'll turn up here, but we'll be ready for them. We've got at least four people who can take a werewolf on hand-to-hand, another on the way, and two who can fight with their minds. And most of us have pretty decent aim with firearms."

Jordy appeared in the doorway. "There's a car parking across the street."

The adults all jumped simultaneously. Oz darted to the window, and then let out a breath of relief. "It's all right. Cavalry."

The sound of car doors slamming filtered through the window glass, then a yelp and a "Wait a minute, Man! It's hung." Footsteps clattered on the porch. The front door popped open to reveal Thu Khiem, Fred Burkle, Charles Gunn, and Spike, who was struggling with a large black umbrella.

"Bloody collapsibles. Think they'd make a brolly that just opened and closed, without all this spidery business." Spike shook the flapping contraption in frustration, and then dropped it on the floor. Gunn shook his head.

"Hey, I _said_ you shoulda gone with the little lavender parasol." He strode into the dining room and set a shoebox down beside the fried chicken bucket. "We got some old nappy silverplate melted down into shot. Dilip's on the phone with some of his relatives tryin' to see what kind of anti-wolf mojo'll be safest; we don't wanna accidentally give some of you guys hives or anything. Hi, Little Man." Gunn smiled down at Jordy and held a hand out to him. Jordy took it, and his own pale, tiny hand was swallowed up by Gunn's massive one as they shook solemnly.

Thu held up a large shopping bag. "I brought more decorations. Oh, cool! Your whole _tree's_ made out of tinsel!" She scurried to the sofa with Jordy at her heels, and the two began unloading the sack.

"That ought to keep him busy for a good long while," Oz's mother smiled a little. "It looks like there's everything but the kitchen sink in that bag."

"I'm not sure I wanna know what's in the bag," Gunn said ruefully. He turned to Michael. "You know those Hell's Weebles that invaded your house last summer? She strung 'em into a garland and hung it on the wreath on her front door."

Spike perched his rear on the windowsill overlooking the porch and surveyed the refugees. "All's well so far, then? No sign of the Boxcar Children?"

"Not yet." Oz roused himself from thought. "...You said there's a demon in town who dimension-hops. Could she take my folks to her world to hide?"

"Only as a last resort. Chupacabra Land's got some dodgy gasses in its atmosphere; not the healthiest stuff to breathe. Slayers can handle it, but it makes ordinary humans sick. Not sure what it'd do to wolf-humans. You'd need oxygen tanks, air hoses, that sort of thing."

"Don't worry," Fred soothed. "We've fought lots worse than a few werewolves. It'll be okay."

"Do you have anything that belongs to your sister or her friends?" Michael asked Elsie D suddenly.

"Her - her TV's in my car."

"Do you have the remote?"

"Yeah...?"

"Bring it in here. I'll see if I can get a vision of them with it."

Elsie D rose obediently and went out the front door. When she returned, she gave the remote to Michael and went back to her seat at the other end of the table. The seer closed his eyes and held the instrument loosely in his hands. He slid his fingertips over it; traced the buttons, the smooth back. Without being told, Fred quietly closed the dining room door.

* * *

Flashes. Images. Dry, cold dust and sniffling noises. Scents of jism and of whiskey, and a metallic smell whose origin he could only guess at. Yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow yellow blink and you'll miss one...

_It's the divider stripes on the highway. I'm seeing them from over a dashboard - over a steering wheel. Is there a logo on the wheel? _

Too late, the image shifted. The past accordioned forward over the present, and all he could see now was an assembly line with factory workers putting together hundreds of television remote controls, all identical to the one in his hand. Michael gave up and opened his eyes. Nine faces were looking at him expectantly.

"Nothing much. They're somewhere on the road. Driving something big; a van, or a pickup with monster truck wheels. I'll have to try again later."

From behind the door to the living room, Thu Khiem called out, "Can someone tall come help us with the high-up stuff?"

She and Jordy had transformed the room into a gaudy wonderland. Blue and gold tinsel garlands were taped to the walls, mixtures of real and artificial evergreens were arranged in clusters and stuffed into any opening that would support them, strings of twinkle lights blinked within a few inches of all the available electrical sockets, and red bows were twist-tied onto everything. The two had topped off their creation by flinging mylar icicles everywhere. Only a few plastic popcorn and cranberry strands remained in their arms. Thu caught the end of hers as it began to slide to the floor. "We can't reach the top of the curtains."

"Oh, Honey!" Maureen gave a little laughing gasp at the sight of her son. Michael smiled unconcernedly and took one of the strands to drape across the top of a window. Jordy beamed with pride.

"How does it look?"

"Very cool." Oz nodded approval. "Kind of an eclectic thing going. It's what I'd envision if Rankin/Bass threw up."

"Look." Jordy pushed the switch on the dancing Santa, and the toy swayed its hips hula-style as the electronic music box inside it played "Jingle Bell Rock." A pleased smile came over the boy's face, and he began unconsciously to sway his own hips from side to side in imitation. Thu scooped up a handful of icicles and tossed them into the air. She watched them settle on the heads of Spike and Gunn, and sighed with contentment.

"Righteous."

* * *

**Author's Note: The poem referred to in this chapter is **_**The Rime of the Ancient Mariner**_** by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, 1798.**


	12. Chapter 12

**Chapter 12**

Weak winter sun was in the windshield, too weak to penetrate the hull of the extended-cab pickup. _Dodge trucks are RAM tough. Or is it Fords?_ Didn't matter; it was powerful and roomy and had a tank full of gas. Jeep vaguely recalled taking the truck by the light of the moon: approaching it on all fours as it sat unguarded in a parking lot and then discovering life inside; encircling it on lowered bellies and silent padded feet; Toni whimpering piteously until its occupants opened the doors to look for the poor lost puppy.

He had kept one of the bodies intact, dragging it by the throat a short distance away to pull clumsily at the clothing. Barry joined him and bore his weight on one end of the corpse while Jeep pawed and tugged with his teeth. The work yielded him a tattered but serviceable pair of pants and a shirt. Then that body was eaten, too.

Where the rest of their clothing had come from was entirely forgotten: a Goodwill donation box, a clothesline, a laundromat. Not from home though, goddammit. That spooky little bitch Elsie had almost run them down in their own driveway, and an assload of cops had shown up not long afterward, too many to try to take out and so they'd had to turn tail and run back into the desert.

Rita beside him by turns cursed and wept. In the back seat the others dozed. Jeep fished a Jack Daniels bottle from the floor and rolled the window down halfway, shivering as icy air swept into the cab. "Hey, Shug, watch." Holding the bottle by its neck, he extended his arm as far out of the window as he could reach. Then with deadly accuracy he arced his arm skyward and lobbed the bottle up and over the top of the truck and watched it explode with a satisfying smash against a county line sign.

Rita wiped her eyes and giggled a little. Her face was bleeding mascara and lipstick, and she rubbed the black and pink hemorrhage on her pants and sucked in a deep draught of the outside air.

"He's out this way," she smiled dreamily. "My Bobby."

Jeep nodded and laid his free arm across her shoulders. The boy's scent filtered in, thin and weak like the winter sun. Elsie D's scent came and went, too. _Little cunt. Ungrateful fucking little cunt._ Jeep stretched three fingers out across the steering wheel and watched his nails elongate into wicked points. They didn't have much of a plan, not yet, but one would come. And they had in their favor a wondrous thing, a thing Jeep saw on his hands and felt in his mouth. A thing that they all had known for a while but only now could put into words:

The line between the Man Time and the Dog Time was growing thinner.

* * *

_There's magic in a Black Cat._ Not an actual cat, but the little black firecrackers with grey lettering. One by itself was a miniature stick of dynamite; a string of them, woven together by their fuses in an intricate braid like hot Mexican peppers, was Hephaestus unleashed. Tear away their crackling paper cover and leopard head label and heft them in your hand - how many will fire? How long will the explosions last? Will you risk going deaf and take your fingers out of your ears?

Jordy lit a cone with his sparkler and leaped away as a fountain of multi-colored starbursts spewed from its top. It was New Year's Eve, and as long as no airborn missiles like Roman candles or bottle rockets were set off, Ashcraft police would turn a tolerant blind eye to fireworks. Thu Khiem The Slayer had given a sackful to the little boy, while her parents and his settled into a quiet, heartfelt discussion on the trials and tribulations of raising supernatural children.

They were still at it when Jordy went inside to go to the bathroom. He saw them, sitting by the fireplace in Mr. Wight's living room, looking sad and serious even with presents piled up under the tree at their feet. When he was done he went back out quickly, not wanting to hear what they said.

Thu Khiem had temporarily abandoned the fireworks to visit with the neighbors' teenage son and daughter at the edge of the yard. Oz, Fred, Spike, and Elsie D perched on the steps and broad railing of the porch, within champagne bottle-passing distance of each other, sipping directly from the shared container. Jordy sat down beside them with a melancholy face. Spike smiled at him playfully and waved the bottle. "Want to toast the new year, Sapling? Guaranteed to put hair on your chest."

"The last drink out of a bottle is ninety-nine percent spit," Jordy deadpanned.

Oz nodded somberly. "It's a proven playground statistic."

"Uh." Spike thought it over for a moment, peered down the bottle's neck with one squinting eye, then shrugged and took a swig. "Oh, well, what doesn't kill you makes you strong."

Fred pulled her knees up against her chest and rested her arms across them and studied Jordy closely. He sat for a while in silence. Then, not looking anyone in the face, he turned his head in Fred's and Elsie D's direction and said in a small, confessional voice, "Sometimes I turn into a monster."

No one said anything. Finally Elsie D replied, "My teeth come out."

She reached into her mouth and gently removed a partial plate. Jordy stared as her upper lip collapsed inward like a withering jack o' lantern's and she held the denture out for him to see. Between her thumb and forefinger, four disembodied front teeth glistened in the rotating colors of the Christmas tree window, green and yellow and blue and red.

Jordy's eyes were enormous. "You've got a _grandma_ mouth!" he breathed. He touched the false teeth with a tentative finger. "Where'd you get these?"

"At the dentist." Elsie D's speech had taken on a noticeable lisp.

"What happened to your real ones?"

"They got knocked out in a car wreck."

Jordy was now doubly impressed. He watched in lurid fascination as Elsie put her bridgework back in place and the pink, pretty upper lip plumped out once more. Just like that, like magic, she was young again. From the yard, Thu shook the fireworks bag and called out, "Jordan! Whizzers!" Jordy hopped to his feet and galloped over to her, his melancholia forgotten.

Oz looked at Elsie D appreciatively. "Thanks. That was nice of you." She smiled back, a quick, cautious smile. There was a squeal of laughter and protest as Spike hoisted Fred up onto the porch rail with him and began to tickle her.

"What does the 'D' stand for?" Oz asked. "'D-e-e' as in 'Tweedle'?"

"Dean. My mama had a thing for James Dean." In her soft twanging accent the word came out _thang._ "She had posters of him all over her bedroom."

"Is it your last name or your middle name?"

"Both, I guess." Elsie D hugged her knees against herself as Fred had done before. "One of her boyfriends used to call me 'Wristwatch'...you know, L-C-D? Liquid Crystal Display?"

The tickle fight was escalating to dangerous levels. Spike was stretched out on his back along the railing, letting Fred have the upper hand, shouting laughter as her fingertips tried to attack his armpits. There was a final, brief struggle, then a sudden crash of branches and a thud as they both lost their balance and fell off the rail and into the hedge.

"Do you usually go by 'Daniel' or by 'Oz'?"

"'Oz' is fine." The empty champagne bottle rolled haphazardly across the porch floor. Oz reached out to it and set it upright between his feet. "Bottles can make excellent woodwind instruments; ever notice that?" He picked up the vessel and blew across its top, producing a low, hollow tone. Elsie plucked a piece of dead grass from a concrete planter on the steps, pinned it between her thumbs, cupped her hands together, and blew into them. The grass blade vibrated as neatly as a harmonica reed and made a loud goosehonk. She flexed her thumbs in and out, changing the pitch a dozen different ways, drawing the notes out in one long blast and then puffing her breath to create a Donald Duck chortle. Little giggles and soft rustling sounds came out of the hedge.

Oz momentarily stopped playing Bass Champagne Bottle and smiled peacefully at pretty Elsie. "Happy New Year."

* * *

On January 1st, while the Osbourne household opened its gifts, the former members of Angel Investigations and their new associates belabored over the werewolf dilemma. Their laboring was done in Dilip Singh's parlor, in the manager's apartment of the Happy Trails Tourist Court at the edge of town. An array of weapons and pages of spells and encyclopedism lay spread out on the tables (the striking contrast between Giles' and Wesley's mysterious antique parchment books and Dilip's Big Chief Tablets did not escape them.) Thu wielded a recently silver-plated sword thoughtfully - it was a good weapon, but she wouldn't be able to easily draw it from a sheath, as it was taller than she was. The length had its advantages, though; it meant more distance between oneself and a werewolf's dooming bite.

"I don't know, man," Gunn worried. "I'm still thinkin' it ought to be _solid_ silver. I mean, we're on a hellmouth. That might make these puppies stronger, more resistant, know what I'm sayin'?"

"Silver is silver. The amount doesn't matter. All it ever takes is one tiny piece piercing a vital organ." Dilip stubbornly held his ground.

"We can make a few solid ones," Fred conceded, "But we should try the alloys first. We just don't have enough for a lot of pure silver bullets. As long as there's at least a trace of silver in the mix, it should work..and we've got the tranq guns, too."

Paloma sensed the humans' unease. By all accounts these loup-garou were no good, either as wolves or as people, but until her companions had seen proof of that with their own eyes there would be hesitation in their step. From the vampire, maybe not so much, but the others...when you tranquilize a wolfman and pen him up, what do you do with him if he comes to himself and is unrepentant? Where the hell would you jail such a creature? And could you bring yourself to shoot him as he stood defenseless in his jail cell?

_Best to leave that job to me, mis amigos. I got no problem mercy-killing a killer._ She settled deeper into her chair and wondered who among the chupacabra she could bribe into joining them.

"He _looks_ wolfy," Thu commented. At the blank expressions, she clarified. "Oz. He's got a wolfy face. Kind of long, and his jaw's kind of jutting. And he doesn't shave very close. I wonder if he ever drinks out of the toilet?"

"Oh, my god, that's disgusting!" Paloma yelled. "Of course not!"

"...Does he ever scratch his butt by dragging it around on the carpet?"

"Do you?"

Under his breath Gunn grinned and muttered to Spike, "Can he lick his own balls?"

The telephone jangled, startling Singh's cat off of the kitchen counter. It glared at the phone balefully as its master answered, scribbled some notes onto a pad, and announced to the room, "Michael picked up another vision. The pack is in Phoenix."


	13. Chapter 13

**Chapter 13**

Nightfall of January 1st, and on the outskirts of Phoenix, just off a highway, the van from Ashcraft lurked in the parking lot between a small tavern and a seedy economy motel. The lot was far from empty - holiday revelry was picking right up from where it had left off the night before, the frosty temperature proving to be no deterrent. Few people lingered outdoors, though; most darted like swallows from car to bar to bedroom and back again, some individually, some in clusters.

Inside the van, Spike drummed his fingers restlessly on the steering wheel. Oz sat quietly, almost meditatively, in the passenger seat. Every so often they passed a flashlight and a tiny bottle back and forth between them. Thu Khiem and Paloma occupied the bench seat behind them, gazing out through the windows at the human traffic.

"I'm gonna call Michael again." Thu dug her cellular phone from her coat pocket and fiddled with it in the darkness. Michael's vision that morning had been much clearer than those of the previous days - this time Elsie D's TV remote control had yielded him an actual address: The Roadrunner Inn (or as Dilip contemptuously referred to it, a "Motel 2.")

"Hi, it's me...uh-uh, we're still just sitting here waiting. Has the remote given you anything new?" She cupped her hand over the phone and told the others, "He keeps smelling beer and seeing little flashes, but they're blurry."

"Tell him to try adjusting the tracking buttons."

"Paloma says try adjusting the trac-" She stopped and rolled her eyes at Paloma's little smile. "Oh, haha. Very funny."

Another car pulled into a parking space not far from their own. They watched as a familiar figure in a dark overcoat stepped out of it and crunched across the gravel toward them. Paloma reached over and unlocked the van's door. "Buenos noches," she greeted, as Angel slid the door open and hoisted himself inside.

Spike gave him a glance, then turned his attention back to the view through the windshield again. "Running a little behind schedule, aren't you?"

"I had to drop Nina off at Wight's house." Angel nodded at the passenger seat. "Hey, Oz."

"Drop _Nina_ off?" Spike piped, more than a little surprised. "What's she doing here?"

"She heard there were werewolves. Well, that Oz was here, and she wanted to see if he can teach her how to do the mutation control thing. And she thinks she might be able to help guard his family...do I smell fingernail polish?"

Spike and Oz each wordlessly raised a hand in the air without taking their eyes from the buildings. Their nails were freshly painted black.

Spike looked back over his shoulder at Angel and flashed an amused grin. "And you tried to tell her that she couldn't come, an' _she_ told _you_ to take a long walk off a short pier."

Angel shifted uncomfortably and scowled at Spike. "I just told her that I was concerned about her getting mixed up in a potentially dangerous situation." He paused. "And why am I explaining this to _you,_ anyway?"

Oz sat up suddenly. "That's them."

Two men had just emerged from one of the motel rooms, their shoulders hunched and their faces obscured by the turned-up collars of their workshirts. They pulled the door shut behind them and stuffed their hands in their pants pockets. Neither wore a coat, but in spite of the cold they moved unhurriedly.

Oz was out of the van almost before anyone even realized he'd spoken.

"Wait!" Angel made a grab for the young werewolf, but he was already out of reach. Thu pressed her face to the glass for a view of Oz's departing back.

"There's no need to fear; Underdog is here!" she cheered in a stage whisper. "...And he's kind of scary-looking when he's pissed." She flopped across the bench seat's back with her head and arms hanging down and her legs kicking the air for balance and began digging through the weapons box in the cargo area.

* * *

The cold wasn't bothering Jeep as much as it should have. Nothing much seemed to bother him now, in fact - he felt A-fucking-firmative, in fact. Slicker'n snot on a doorknob. Had been, ever since they'd driven into this end of town...there was something under their feet, something in the _ground,_ and it was giving them the finest rush they'd ever had in their lives.

He ambled along the side of the motel shoulder to shoulder with Barry, aiming for the alcove with the ice and soda machines. From the corner of his eye he noticed a short, smallish guy standing a few feet away in front of a row of parked cars, watching them. The stare rankled Jeep. As they passed by he glared at the stranger and snapped out, "What're _you_ lookin' at, Shithead?"

Then he caught an odor he recognized, and jerked to a stop.

The stranger spoke.

"Stay away from Jordy."

Bobby's smell was on the guy, and Elsie's. Jeep remembered the little fucker now - it was the same sumbitch who'd had them arrested. The kid's brother or uncle or some damn thing.

He heard a chuffing sound of vehicle doors opening and closing, and four other people appeared from out of the darkness: two men, a woman, and a little girl.

Easy enough.

Barry began to chuckle low in his throat. A musky smell rose from his body as he and Jeep removed their hands from their pockets and fixed L'il Fucker and his friends with slow, nasty grins. Follicle by follicle, fur broke through the surface of their arms and jawlines and necks and across the back of their hands, traveling in a bizarre path like unchecked mold. Jeep raised his head to accommodate his stretching chin as his gums filled with new, savage teeth. It was the Moon Feel, but this time power was coming from the earth instead of the sky.

They waited gleefully for the fear, the gasps of shock, the looks of terror and the stumbling backwards and the running ("The runnin's the best part, watch 'em go; take out three or four with a swipe and chase down the last ones, tail 'em 'til they drop, maybe hump 'em if they're pretty.")

...But hell, they weren't running, they were just _standing_ there, and that asshole with the cigarette hanging out of his mouth was _smiling!_

Then one by one the uncle-brother and the other two men and the woman started changing shape, too, and Jeep's and Barry's cocksureness faltered a little. Uncle Brother's eyes turned solid black, like theirs, and his fingers curved into claws and hair and teeth sprouted and damned if _he_ wasn't a werewolf, too...and the hulking guy in the overcoat and the smiling smoker were God knew what; yellow eyes and caveman foreheads and two big fangs apiece, and the woman - jeezus tits, the woman suddenly looked as if she was half lizard.

Only the little girl remained human, studying Jeep and Barry with a dark, solemn scrutiny that Jeep found infuriating. Studied him like a _bug,_ gawdammit; like he was a stuffed display in some pansy-ass _museum,_ calm as a cucumber when she was supposed to be crying and screaming and crapping her pants, and this blatant disrespect maddened Jeep beyond all reason.

"You SHIT!" Livid, he threw himself at the girl, determined to wipe that curious expression off of her face and to wipe that face off of her head. He was almost on top of her when he saw a flash of metal swing up from her side. Alarm bells went off in his brain, and he checked himself in midair and twisted his body in a great convulsive effort to change direction. The movement pulled his legs up momentarily against his chest, and the girl's sword _(SWORD? What the hell's a little girl doing with a SWORD?)_ whished across the air in front of her and missed his ankles by mere inches - if she'd been a foot taller she would have sliced open his kneecaps. He landed rolling and the blade arced back in the opposite path, whistling just over his head. Its edge grazed sidelong across his scalp; only a shallow surface wound, but for some reason it burned as though it were acid. Jeep leaped to his feet and backwards, and incredulously, saw the girl advancing on him, swinging the sword with both hands in a rhythmic side-to-side motion, rapidly, viciously, steady as a pendulum, and the look on her face was cold and deadly.

Barry - who had dropped to all fours and taken on the freakish appearance of an enormous brindle bulldog - let out a hoarse bark and lunged forward, but was intercepted by Oz and Paloma. The three of them went down in a hissing, snarling tangle that rolled behind an SUV and into the shadows.

In the same instant, one of the motel doors flew open, and the three missing members of the pack rushed out and looked around wildly. Rita shrieked at the sight of her husband dodging Thu. She charged after them, yellow terrycloth house slippers flapping insanely on her feet. The slippers burst apart when her feet expanded to almost twice their size and became paws. As she ran past, Angel balled up his hand, swung his arm out, and clouted her in the mouth with the back of his fist. Rita dropped like a struck ox.

It was then that another wondrous thing happened. In her youth, before Jeep and his exciting promises of immortality with just one small bite, a toothache-plagued Rita had had several cavities filled in her back molars. The shape-shifting didn't affect these back teeth much, although as years went by some of the fillings loosened. Angel's blow cracked four of her teeth, freeing the bits of metal. As she fell, she inhaled sharply, sucking the broken fragments of her mouth -blood, teeth, loose fillings - down her windpipe. The fine-edged little fillings, composed from a mixture of silver, copper, and tin, scratched the lining of Rita's trachea when she slammed against the ground.

Dilip would have gotten no argument from Gunn about the trachea's status as a vital organ.

As the fighting went on around her, Rita wheezed, thrashed, gaped wide-eyed at the gravel and asphalt in front of her face, and died.

* * *

_The children of the night...what a stonking great stench they make, _Spike thought when Toni hurtled into him. She'd gone Full Dog, reeking of acrid feral odors like skunk and mouse piss and tomcat spray. _Smells like the monkey house at the zoo._ He managed to stay on his feet, grappling to keep her claws from ripping him a new one, feeling absurdly as if he were wrestling with someone's overly-friendly Great Dane, or a dancing bear. _Down, Fido. BAD pup._

Richard was still partially human and still standing upright, and in his confused mid-transformation state he tried to make fists of hands that could no longer be fisted, so that the punches he threw at Angel were ineffective. The vampire knocked him off his feet with a powerful leg sweep and shoved a sterling silver salad fork into his heart and that was the last of Richard.

"Gim-" Spike jerked his face to one side and spit wolf hair. "Gimme a hand here!" One of his feet had skidded in the gravel, and with Toni's weight against him he had overbalanced and fallen backwards across the hood of a car. Something else thudded onto the hood, too, and he heard a high-pitched "KyeeAAAAAH!" and caught a glimpse of Thu Khiem standing over him with the sword above her head, her mouth open and bellowing and her almond eyes as round and loony-looking as John Belushi's _Samuri: Dry Cleaner._ She gave WereToni two solid whacks across the torso. Toni stiffened and arched her back, and the motel porchlights lit up her snout to reveal bright pink lipstick smeared grotesquely across her flews. Then blood began running from her mouth and nose, and the lipstick wasn't visible anymore.

Spike rolled WereToni's limp body off of him in disgust. "Bitch."

Angel made a quick survey of the carnage: four of the pack were dead, or at least appeared to be - the male Thu had hit seemed to have succumbed to his head injury and was lying motionless a few yards away - while the fifth was fleeing into the open pasture east of the motel, with Paloma and Oz _(It looks like...are they running on all fours?)_ at his heels.

Flashing red and blue lights turned in from the highway and made their way toward the tavern. "Buggar," Spike muttered. "Cops makin' a run through the car park." They'd hoped to pull off this job silently, avoid any run-in with law enforcement, and leave no trace of their having been here. Now they ducked low and hurried back to the van. They clicked the doors shut quietly, cranked the engine, and drove at what they hoped was an inconspicuous pace down the rows to the access road.

As they moved up onto the highway, Thu hung her head out the window and scanned the pastureland. "Where'd they go?" she fretted. "Crap, I hope they don't try to go back to the mo- Oh! There they are!" Two figures could just be made out in the pasture's center, walking in the direction of the parking lot. Spike idled the van on the shoulder of the road. Thu put her pinky fingers in the corners of her mouth and whistled. The figures stopped, then began walking again, this time in the van's direction. They quickened their pace to a jog. A few moments later, they crawled through a barbed-wire fence and climbed into the van, bloody and filthy, their clothing in tatters.

"We get 'em all?" Paloma gasped.

"Yep. Think so, anyway. Kind of lost track of who took out who." Spike glanced in the rearview mirror at the retreating motel grounds. "Coroner should have a hell of a time tryin' to make heads or tails of those corpses."

"Maybe he'll just think that they've got that condition where you grow hair all over your body that I saw on the Discovery Channel," Thu decided.

"Hypertrichosis." Oz found a roll of paper towels under the seat and wiped some of the gore from his hands and face. He was still breathing a little heavily, and in the van's dim interior lights his darkened eyes glittered like blackberries.

Paloma tried to speak again, but only succeeded in making a gargling noise. She stopped and waited a moment for her tongue and vocal chords to shift out of their natural chupacabra shapes and back into the alien human ones, and then she continued, "The guy we chased was pretty heavy. That must have been Barry." She mentally ran through the descriptions that Elsie D had given them. "The tall, skinny, long-haired grenudo was the brother-in-law."

"I picked off...Guy Number Three..." Angel tried to recall the name.

"Richard. You sporked Richard." Thu counted off the pack members on her fingers. "He's for sure dead. So's Barry - gross, you guys didn't eat him, did you? - and so is the brown-haired lady, Toni. Didn't Elsie say her sister was a blonde?"

"Yeah. I'm not sure if she's actually dead, though. All _I_ did was knock her down."

"What about the hubby?" Spike asked. "Mr. _The Hills Have Eyes_?"

"I cut his head open," Thu replied. "I _guess_ that killed him, didn't it?" She contemplated the silver-coated sword and her three upright fingers, and her voice trailed off worriedly.

"I _guess_ it killed him..."


	14. Chapter 14

**Chapter 14**

There was an air of false calm in the rooms of Michael's house.

* * *

Oz's mother moved about one of them quietly. She had her son's mild eyes and tranquil demeanor, and she used them now to console Elsie D as the girl lay ill and miserable in the bed.

"Here's some bread and an antacid tablet. If it doesn't feel better soon, we're taking you down to the hospital."

Elsie D nodded and sat up, taking the plate of food onto her lap. She chewed the slice of bread slowly, without appetite, and her eyes were glazed and dull. Mrs. Osbourne laid a cool hand on Elsie's forehead.

"It's not as bad as it has been," Elsie said to her. "It used to bleed sometimes. It hasn't done that in a while."

"We'll take you to a doctor before it gets to that point," Mrs. Osbourne promised. "Peptic ulcers aren't something to just ignore."

They sat in silence while Elsie D finished the bread and the medication. She set the plate on the bedside table and lay down again and closed her eyes, trying to will her stomach to relax. After a moment she looked back up at the older woman.

"What do y'all do? When it happens? When Oz- when Daniel changes?"

"We wait. And pray. And mark the calendar." Mrs. Osbourne's voice was as low as a lullaby. "He's always taken care of it himself. Found a cage...or gone away. It was months before we knew that he'd been infected. He didn't want us to worry. He used to lock himself up in the high school library every month, can you believe that? He'd tell us that he was spending the night with friends. He just never mentioned that the friends were taking turns guarding him with a gun."

Elsie D's gaze moved past Oz's mother to some distant place.

"...I used to watch Rita. I wish I could have guarded her."

* * *

The house's men paced restlessly. They fingered their weapons, moved from window to window, and watched the phones.

"I thought we'd escaped this kind of insanity when we moved away from Sunnydale," the older Mr. Osbourne commented with a harsh little laugh.

Gunn smiled at him ruefully. "It's everywhere, Man. Shit happens." He was quiet for a moment, and then added with pain in his voice, "But you're lucky. Your Dan's got it under control. I had a sister...she got turned a few years ago. Into a vampire. _Full_-time evil. Wasn't nothing I could do to save her. I know how that girl upstairs feels."

* * *

In another upstairs bedroom, Jordy set up a card table with Kay From The Bank. Mom had fallen asleep on the sofa bed in there, so he whispered and Kay pulled off her high-heeled shoes and they both tiptoed on bare feet. Jordy opened his new Monopoly game. They spread the pieces out on the tabletop and Jordy giggled when Kay moved her little tophat around the board without touching it.

* * *

The kitchen had an old wooden breakfast nook, a built-in booth with cushioned seats. Nina and Fred took their coffee to it and waited.

"It feels as if _finally_ there might be a light at the end of the tunnel." Nina's face glowed with hope. "If I can just learn how to harness this thing, maybe even _use_ it somehow..." She took a gulp of coffee, and continued excitedly. "What's Oz like?"

"Oh, quiet, smart, real nice. Not quiet as in 'he never opens his mouth' quiet; he's just not a loud person, you know? And he's never struck me as the type that would ramble on and on and on and on about absolutely nothing."

"What does he do for a living?"

"Computer work, he said - programming, repair. Free-lance jobs, mostly, sorta like me. Apparently he's drifted a lot. He came home for Thanksgiving last month and discovered that his little cousin had vanished."

In the yard next door a tiny dog began yapping, and Nina instinctively cocked her head toward the sound. She listened, her brow furrowed, concentrating. Then she turned back to Fred in embarrassment.

"I don't know why I do that. For a split second I always think I'm going to understand what they're saying."

* * *

The warriors returned from the battlefield late that night, and engaged in a final, violent skirmish over first dibs on the bathrooms.

"Phoenix P.D. found five bodies," Kay reported from the living room phone, relaying the words of the Ashcraft officer on the other end of the line. "They match the descriptions of Jordy's kidnappers, give or take a few hairs...our police verified to them that the Osbourne family members were here all night, so they're looking at other leads for the killings, but it's doubtful they'll come up with anything."

"Blood," Paloma remembered suddenly. "Oz's blood is all over that guy we left in the pasture."

"They won't be able to identify it as his. Morphing into the wolf state alters the DNA structure so radically that it'll be impossible for them to even prove that it's from a human," Fred assured her. She looked up toward the stairwell. "Poor Elsie. I hate to wake her up to tell her..."

* * *

The upstairs bath held the "bird cage" shower, an early 1900s structure of water pipes formed into a round, open framework and surrounded by canvas curtains. Small holes along the pipes sprayed needle-like jets of water onto the bather from all directions like a primitive Jacuzzi, while a showerhead the size of a sunflower doused him from above. Oz stood in the center of this maelstrom and rested his arms on an upper horizontal pipe. He'd won the right to the shower by virtue of being the most heavily wounded; now he leaned his head against his arms and watched as blood, fur, mud, and small bits of viscera sluiced down his body to the snow-white enameled basin and into the drain. He rubbed shampoo into his hair with weary fingers. The massive adrenalin rush of the chase had left him exhausted, and while Wolf Mode allowed him to withstand major injuries, he lacked the rapid healing ability of the slayers and the vampires. Instead, a stinging bottle of antiseptic in the medicine cabinet awaited his gashes and punctures.

He shut his eyes against the pipes' watery assault and saw again the prey galloping ahead of him in the night; felt the turf beneath his palms and knew that he was no longer bipedal; inhaled great breaths of Cold and Food and Revenge and Joy; from his excellent peripheral vision saw Paloma racing alongside him, sleek and shining with eyes like silver saucers and scales the colors of the rainbow. Fell on the prey _(not a man, not anymore)_ and sank his teeth and claws once more into its flesh, listening as the chupacabra woman hissed and methodically tore her end of it apart.

He shook himself free of the memory. It was intoxicating, liberating, but the place for it was not here. He appeased it with a comment Spike had made to him as they'd limped up the walk into the house: "We're good boys now, Osbourne; gonna rein in our beasts and be civilized. But fuckin' hell, don't it feel nice to cut loose now and again?"

Oz pulled himself from the shower reluctantly, toweled off, disinfected and bandaged his wounds, and put on clean clothing. He wadded the destroyed clothes into a little trash can and stepped out with it into the upstairs hall.

The bedroom door across from the bath opened, and Elsie D came into its doorway. She was pallid, ghostly almost, but the skin under her eyes was darker than ever.

"Rita's dead, isn't she?"

Her voice sounded dead, too. It made Oz sick at heart.

"Yeah. It was fast. She didn't suffer."

Elsie D nodded. She stood silently, and for a moment appeared calm. Then she drew in a breath that shook her frame, and tears began to well in her eyes. Oz set the trash can down and put his arms around her.

She cried as quietly as she spoke, holding on to him loosely around his shoulders, either unusually gentle in her grief or simply too damn weak and tired to do anything more. He decided on the later, and picked her up and carried her back to her bed.

"Scoot over a little." He lay down next to her and let her fall asleep against him, her head rising and falling with the rising and falling of his chest.

* * *

As she slept, other things awoke.

* * *

_"Come down to us, Boy. Down in the dark."_

Jeep heard the words in his head - no, that was wrong, _felt_ them in his head. The words were solid things, smooth and warm and living. He let himself sink into them.

_"Here where it's nice. No nasty vigilantes, no silly slayers. No one to hurt you ever again." _Hurt. There was hurt in his head.

There was _pain_ in his head, and numbness everywhere else. He found himself unable to move, or to open his eyes. He could hear a little, with his ears, noises that made him think that he was in a vehicle, people speaking to each other, doctor words like "severe lacerations" and "city morgue." _God damn. I'm paralyzed. What the hell they talkin' about morgues for? I ain't __**dead**__!_

The voices in his head made more sense. He turned his mind back toward them.

"_Could you feel us? Through the soles of your feet? Could you feel our pulse, and taste our power? We can make you well again, you know." _

Sweet voices, blow-job sweet.

_"Welcome to the hellmouth, Old Son. We've been waiting for you." _


	15. Chapter 15

**Chapter 15**

"The trick is not to fight it."

For safety's sake, Jordy and Nina had been shackled by their ankles to chains around support columns in the basement of Michael's house, out of arms' reach of each other, and a tranquilizer gun was loaded and ready. Afternoon light from the narrow windows brightened the room somewhat as the two sat crosslegged on the floor with Oz and tried to absorb his instructions.

"It'd be like fighting a rip current; you'll just panic and lose your focus. Let it come, but try to step outside yourself..."

Angel watched the training session from a discreet distance at the head of the basement stairs, while Fred perched on the top step near his feet, quietly videotaping and taking notes. He hoped that Oz knew what he was doing - it was one thing to talk about teaching Nina to morph at will, but to actually _try_ it...

He was out of his element here. It didn't feel comfortable, this handing the reins over to someone else. _He'd_ always been in charge before, always been the one responsible for the group's successes or failures. It was a part of atonement, to take as much as you possibly could onto your own shoulders, to assure that your people were safe.

Nina often teased him about being a control freak, but she didn't understand.

And now Oz was morphing into Partial Dog as he spoke, and his words had developed a rough, guttural tone. Nina straightened slowly and leaned toward him, her gaze intense and her nostrils flaring, responding to some scent or signal that apparently only werewolves shared. That Jordy was having the same reaction didn't lessen Angel's sudden pang of jealousy.

"Pheromones?" Fred whispered. "Look, it's causing them to behave as though there's a full moon. Amazing." Nina had risen onto her hands and knees and begun to pant. The unnatural respiration shook her ribs and shoulders, and her dangling breasts bobbed crazily in the hammock of her bra. Oz spoke again, and her breath slowed, labored but even. Long blonde hairs became visible on her arms, thickening and then receding, and moved in and out along the sides of her face. Her brow bulged. She swayed, serpent-like, almost sensually, never taking her coal-black eyes from Oz. Jordy sat motionless, his mouth slightly open, and his little chin and lower canines jutted sharply. His ears had lengthened into elf points. A lump appeared under the fabric of his stretchy Cotton/Poly warm-up pants: the beginnings of a tail.

"Still with me?" Oz grunted. His students nodded. "Okay, we're gonna go back now."

Bit by bit, they morphed again, until all that was left was human. Nina closed her eyes and sank onto her elbows in exhaustion and rested her forehead on the cold cellar floor. Jordy flopped back against his column. "I _did_ it!" he gasped. "I stayed awake the whole time!"

Angel was unable to keep still any longer. He shot down the steps and knelt beside Nina, pulling her up in his arms and examining her worriedly. Shiny with sweat, she raised her face to his in triumph.

"So did I!"

* * *

_Pray God __**I**__ never have to identify my family's bodies. _Ken Osbourne stood quietly behind Elsie D, his wife beside her with an arm around her shoulder, as the girl moved from table to table and gave a name to each cadaver. The morgue seemed to be composed entirely of chemicals and stainless steel, and every sound was harsh and echoing. His brother and sister-in-law had returned to Phoenix now that the danger was over, to put their homes back in order and prepare for the entire clan's eventual return, but he and Maureen had stayed behind, among other things to help this lost child bury her sibling.

Now the sad, gruesome task here was finally completed. The girl had held up well, but Ken couldn't get them out of the building fast enough, and as they climbed back into their car he felt a sudden, desperate need to take a bath.

* * *

The basement party exploded into Michael's kitchen, some of its members literally shouting with excitement. Jordy waylaid Spike as he ambled in sleepily from upstairs. Grabbing the vampire by the belt, he yanked to get his attention and shrieked, "I CAN DO IT! I can make a face just like you can, and then I can make it go away!"

Spike cocked an eyebrow at him and grinned. "Can you now? Well, that's bloody impressive. Good lad."

Jordy beamed at the praise and danced away. Nina swooped down on Fred's videocamera. "Come on, let's play it back on the TV. I want to see everything that happened!" Tugging at Angel's sleeve, she and Fred launched into exhilarated chatter, and gradually the uproar dispersed into other parts of the house, leaving the kitchen peaceful once more.

Spike watched them go for a moment, then sat down on a bar stool and lazily scratched his stomach. " 'Pears I napped through all the fun." Under his breath he added darkly, "Not real fond of experiments in basements anyway."

He regarded Michael, who continued to unhurriedly load the dishwasher. "Were you in here doin' housework with all that going on belowstairs? Would have thought you'd be right in the thick of it."

"I was listening."

Spike smiled conspiratorially. "Bet you were. That sixth sense trick saves you quite a few steps, doesn't it? Shame it sort of flagged out on us last night, though. I guess your reception was off."

Michael rinsed his hands in the sink and began to dry them on a cup towel. "I did pick up an interesting thing now and then," he said, slowly.

"Yeah? Winning Lotto numbers? The 2005 fall TV lineup, as if anyone cares?"

"...Joyce liked her flowers."

Spike fell silent. He turned and looked wordlessly at Michael.

"The ones you brought. For her funeral."

That little bouquet that he'd pieced together in the floral shop, with a heavy heart and hands whose trembling had surprised him; the one he'd thrown to the ground in frustration when Harris wouldn't just shut the fuck up and leave him be..._Joyce?_

"Carnations for motherhood, tea rose for remembrance, ivy for friendship. She keeps them in a vase on her mantel, and oh, their perfume just _fills_ the air." For a moment the seer seemed to be reciting a woman's words rather than his own.

Then he gave his head a slight shake, as if recovering himself, and quietly hung the cup towel up to dry.

* * *

In the chemical-and-chrome house of the dead, a medical examiner's assistant rolled open one of the body storage drawers and looked puzzled by its empty surface.

"Hey, did someone move this guy out already?"

"What guy?"

"The tall one; had that cut on his head...that's what I mean; he's not here."

"Huh. I don't know. I can check."

"...I haven't heard anything about moving any of them yet. No one told me _anything._"

"Well, don't panic; he'll turn up somewhere. It's not like he got up and pranced out by himself."

* * *

He could move in the walls now, a shadow man, hidden behind the paint and plaster and across the ceiling and now out an air duct, causing more than one employee to shudder as he passed and wonder if the morgue _wasn't_ haunted, after all, and he slid through the dark dead grass and into an ancient crack in the pavement _(Step on a crack; break your mother's back)_ and then the upper world fell away.

His new world was cavernous, cool to the touch, and blood-blister purple. Hell was a cave, he guessed, a nice dark cave very like a den. He dropped to all fours and began walking that way, the pads of his feet pressing against solid rock. It occurred to him that he was solid again, too. That was all right; the shadow people would show him how to become one of them again soon.

"He's come," soft, breathless voices whispered around him. "He's come, he's come, he's come."

Jeep's chest swelled with pride. Rita and the pack were forgotten; this was new hunting ground, and it might all belong to him. He paused by a stalagmite, stood up on his hind legs, and splattered the side of it with urine as high as his stream could reach. In the tunnel ahead, a skeletal creature stopped in its tracks and hissed at him. Jeep roared and was on the thing in an instant. It was stronger than it looked, and smelled vaguely familiar, somewhat like the hulking overcoat guy and the smiling smoker with whom he had done battle recently. When he closed his jaws on its throat and tore upward, the creature exploded into dust. Jeep sneezed and shook the dust from his pelt, and the little voices in the air squealed like piglets.

* * *

"I want to GO." Nina glared at her lover defiantly, her arms crossed on her chest and a stake clutched in one of her fists.

"NO, damn it! You're NOT going patrolling!"

Their debate had been raging all afternoon, and even for Thu it had passed from entertaining to annoying boredom. She lay crossways on the sofa with her legs dangled over its back and her head hanging over the seat's edge so that Angel and Nina would appear to be arguing upside down.

"People have patrolled without superpowers before; you told me that yourself! Oz used to. And so did those high school kids. And Fred; she's, she's...done stuff."

"ENOUGH!" Nina and Angel jumped simultaneously and looked toward the sofa's opposite end. Pencil and notebook were slammed to the coffee table, and where Fred had just been sitting, a cranky Illyria scowled at them.

"Your prattle is infuriating," she yelled. "Cease it before I throw you _both_ out to the mercy of the night-feeders!"

Thu looked up at Illyria from her topsy-turvy position beside her. "Hi."

"All evening," the Old One snarled, "All _evening_ I have listened to this pointless chatter. _I_ will patrol, and I will take the man-dog hybrid with me. He at least knows how to hold his tongue." She stood up and impatiently yanked off her pants, shoes, and sweater, while in the wink of an eye her leathery battle armor emerged from her skin and took their places. Redressed, she stomped past Nina and Angel and exited out the front door.

Oz watched her tirade without comment. Then he shrugged and set down the Find-A-Word puzzle he'd been working, picked up a crossbow, and followed her out.


	16. Chapter 16

**Chapter 16**

Thu held her legs up straight in the air and studied her toes. Then with a gusty sigh, she flopped over and upright and hauled herself to her feet. "I'm leaving, too," she announced. "It's Tacky Jewelry Night on QVC." She flourished her palm at Angel and Nina in a melodramatic "halt" gesture and added loftily, "Don't bother; I'll let myself out through the kitchen."

Alone in the room now, Nina took up their quarrel again. "I just want to _watch_, that's all. It's the only way I'll learn."

"You don't _have_ to learn."

"But I WANT to learn!"

"Yeah, well, I want to get a tan line. That doesn't make it a good idea." Angel ran a hand through his hair in exasperation. "Look, we can talk about this again in the morning. Right now let's just go back to our motel room."

"We can't."

"Why not?" His voice rose high with irritation.

"Because our car is still in the Roadrunner parking lot."

Angel's mouth opened, and snapped shut. He stood motionless, staring at Nina. Then with an abrupt "AUUGH!" he turned and slapped the top of a low bookcase. The surface of the case split with a loud crack. The dancing Santa perched atop it began to swing its hips back and forth, and its built-in music box sprang to life. "JINGLE BELL, JINGLE BELL, JINGLE BELL ROCK..."

They gazed at the little figure, who looked fearlessly back at them as it continued to hula. After a moment, Nina put her hand to her mouth and laughed.

"Don't be angry, Angel," she coaxed, petting him on the face. His shoulders sagged the slightest bit, almost but not quite in defeat, and he shook his head slowly.

"I'm not angry. ...I'm afraid. I don't want anything to happen to you." He remembered the sight of her tied to the dining table of a ghoulish company of gourmands; how close she came to dying.

Nina rolled the stake in her hand up and down between her palms. "I know you don't. I don't want anything to happen to me, either, but it already has. So I want to be familiar with your world - _our_ world. None of us are what we are by choice." She reached over and turned the dancing Santa off. "How about a compromise. When I can morph by myself - ALL by myself; without anyone's help and staying in control the whole time - _then_ you'll teach me how to hunt demons."

Angel nodded quietly. "Okay."

"You _can_ have a tan line, you know." She was grinning at him now. "Those salons with the UV booths and the little black goggles. Or we can buy you a bottle of instant bronzer." Her hand slid down and began to explore potential line marks. "Which would you prefer, spray-on or lotion?"

* * *

Stealth had no place in Illyria's method of patrolling. She strode rapidly and imperiously, her boots stamping the ground and her head held high and aloof. Burrowed into his coat and puffing frosty breaths of air, Oz was hard-pressed to keep up with her.

When a fledgling vampire sauntered out of the cemetery gates, the Old One grabbed it by the lapels and flung it into the boughs of an evergreen tree with unrestrained pleasure, impaling it on the larger branches. It had been a boy, not much older than Jordy, and despite its fangs the look of shock on its face as it dusted made Oz wince. Illyria stepped onto the asphalt pathway and surveyed the boneyard, cocking her head from side to side. The place was silent now, perhaps settling back into sleep. A soft wind lifted the blue-brown tendrils of her hair, then laid them down again. She seemed not to feel the cold.

"We separate here," she decided. "Look for damaged graves and broken mausoleum doors."

"...Got it."

Oz knelt and gently straightened a faded wreath whose stand had sunk partway into the ground. Thin, dirty cellophane ribbon hung from its surface in tatters. When it was level and upright again, he rose and walked down the path into the field of tombstones. Illyria watched him with a puzzled expression.

* * *

Twenty minutes passed, then three-quarters of an hour. Other than the one erupted grave, a hole churned up the middle of its mound as though a boy-sized gopher had tunneled through, nothing in the cemetery appeared to be amiss. Oz lowered his crossbow. Ahead of him he spotted Illyria, squatting in the grass and obscured by shadows, motionless. His brow knit in confusion. _Do Old Ones pee?_

"Illyria?"

"The colony's slumber is disturbed."

Illyria's eyes were fixed on a patch of earth between her knees. Oz squinted at the dead grass and soil, but in the darkness could make out nothing. He gathered his concentration and morphed slightly, and picked up a faint smell of insects. "You mean ants?"

"Beings pass through their realm; creatures not of their kind. Those who can, rouse themselves enough to do battle, to defend the queen. But they find nothing solid to attack. This distresses them, and they cannot rest properly. They worry that when the earth is warm again, they will not have strength enough to fulfill their function."

Oz studied the ground solemnly. "Do the termites know about this?"

With one abrupt movement Illyria stood up. "The hellmouth is stirring. Were I of its ilk, I would take an interest." She marched away without a backward glance.

_The __**hellmouth**__? _"Whoa, wait," Oz called after her. "Stirring? Stirring how?"

"Wraiths. They want a lord to rival Anubis the jackal, one of the most powerful gods of the dead. They believe that this would make their own kingdom great in the eyes of their fellows." Her tone made it plain that Illyria was bored by the topic.

_Wraiths...wraiths...restless ghosts, if I remember correctly. _Oz caught up and fell in step behind her. He chose his words carefully. "I'm guessing they couldn't even _hope_ to be as cool as Old Ones in the social order, right?"

"They are mere afterthoughts of human life, as witless as monkeys, drawn to hellmouths by lust and vanity. Even the other spirits ignore them." Illyria's own vanity was stroked by Oz's compliment, and she grew more affable. "I would find it highly amusing if they were to call up an underworld hound such as Garm or Cerberus, only to have it turn on them and devour them all."

"Yeah, that would rock, I guess. ...Well, they obviously can't touch _you,_ 'cause you've got the whole god thing going on, but are they something that the rest of us should worry about?"

"No more than you should worry about the sea's spray, or the mist that assails your nostrils when you drink from a newly-poured glass of Mr. Pibb."

"Okay," Oz agreed, "Guess we'll let it lie, then."

It was hard to reconcile in his mind this arrogant, violent, self-centered woman - if indeed she _was_ female - with the sweet-natured and joyous person called Fred. They were as different as night and day, even down to the way in which they carried the body they shared: the human girl all gamin limbs and coltish fidgets; the demon as rigid as if she'd been strapped to a board.

Life was weird.

_Maybe I'll have that put on a T-shirt._

* * *

The shadow people danced on the walls.

Some of them had been magicians in life - _true_ magicians, not mere illusionists who plied their tricks for pittance at Las Vegas theaters and county fairs - and these, the former dark witches and renegade alchemists, had pooled what was left of their knowledge and made a spell. The spell had settled on Jeep (whether by luck or choice the wraiths could no longer remember) and had saved him from the slow silver poisoning with its hateful paralysis, and brought him here.

"Here" was now a cleft in the cave wall. It opened onto a flat slab of rock, washed with sunlight, overlooking a brook and a wide green meadow. Within the meadow, game grazed: elk and rabbit and fat, elusive partridges. She-wolves high in their heat whined enticement from other cliffs nearby, the breeze ruffled and cooled his fur, and the brookwater sparkled in the sun.

Were Jeep to look a bit more sharply into this idyllic landscape, he might have noticed the red glow that winked here and there in the grass at the edges of the meadow, a glow that looked suspiciously like hot flowing lava peeking up through cracks in the ground, and he would have spotted thin wisps of steam rising from the anthills.

"Is it good?" the shadows whispered. "Is it as we promised?"

Jeep grinned a dog's grin, the corners of his mouth drawing up and his tongue lolling out. "That creek don't have no beer in it, does it?" he complained. "Y'all gonna show me how to do the shadder thang now?"

"Eat first. Ohhh, eat." The shadows moved over the floor in black pools.

Jeep leapt to his feet. He cleared the stone slab in one bound and went racing across the meadow, flushing out prey in all directions. Against an outcropping of rocks he cornered a large rabbit, plump and juicy. But on closer inspection of it he hesitated, then decided to go after a partridge instead; the rabbits he was accustomed to eating did not have heads whose surfaces were completely covered by eyes.

* * *

As they turned the corner onto Michael's block, Illyria suddenly spoke again. "I will NOT apologize."

Before Oz could ask what the apology was for, he heard Fred's voice coming out of the same mouth, answering back. "I _know_ they get on your nerves, but you shouldn't have just yelled at them like that-"

"They would not stop, otherwise. Unless I were to strike them-"

"NO! No striking! And no smothering, and no taping people's mouths shut! God, I wish I'd never shown you what duct tape was-"

Spike hurried up to them out of the night, a crease of worry between his eyes. He scowled at Now-Illyria. "Wish you'd give some notice when you're about to pop out, 'Lyri. Found her clothes all over the floor an' it scared the living hell out of me."

"Angel and his concubine would not be silent. I left in order not to kill them."

"Well, why didn't you just go to wherever it is that you go when you're not here?"

"I was bored there."

"Oh. Well, bad luck, then, 'cause I want Fred back now." Spike took Illyria by her upper arm and tried to guide her into the house, but the Old One quickly pulled away.

"I am not ready to leave yet." Illyria suddenly displayed the same twisted little smile she'd worn when she slew the young vampire. It seemed to push a button in Spike.

"Stop fooling around, Blue. Bring her back," he snapped.

"You are aroused by my appearance in leather clothing. Both of you."

Oz raised his eyebrows at Spike in mild surprise, then shrugged his shoulders at Illyria. "Sorry. It's a guy thing."

"She's just playin' one of her little cat 'n mouse games. 'How Long Does It Take To Piss Off The Vampire.' Trollop." Spike turned on his heel and stalked into the house, his black duster whirling around his legs dramatically. Illyria beamed after him, clearly pleased.

* * *

In the middle of the night Elsie D woke again from a fitful sleep in her assigned guest bedroom, and finally gave up. The churning began in her abdomen, hot and uncomfortable, signalling the start of what Rita had always referred to as "gas on the stomach." Elsie hurriedly peeled a Rolaids from the tube on the bedside table and crunched it between her teeth.

When the tablet was consumed, she made her way down the stairs to the kitchen, moving slowly. She groped for the switch to the narrow undercupboard light, turned it, and filled that corner of the room with a comforting glow. At the refrigerator she found some milk and drank with shaking hands directly from the carton. The liquid was thick and soothing, and she tried to imagine it bathing her insides, coating the ulcer like a healing balm.

Lamplight was coming from the living room, too. Clutching the milk carton against her, Elsie D followed the light and found Oz sunk deep into a big lumpy sofa. His feet were propped up on the edge of the coffee table and covered in heavy suede house slippers shaped like boots and lined with something woolly. A large, stringed musical instrument lay across his lap, and he was plucking at the strings and frets experimentally.

"What kind of guitar is that?" Elsie D whispered. She eased down into the sofa beside him.

"Sitar." His voice was as quiet and soothing as the milk. "I found it in the coat closet. Mr. Singh may have left it here; they come from the Middle East. I've never played one before." He ran a thumb carefully across some of the strings, and the sitar made a dreamlike, exotic noise.

"It's nice. It sounds like a zither." Elsie D curled into a ball and drew her chilly bare feet underneath her. The ordeal of the morgue was over now. Rita would be laid to rest, and Elsie had been relieved and comforted to discover that in death the pack had reverted to its human appearance. Now, finally, there was peace.

"Here." Oz removed his house slippers and handed them to her. Before she could protest, he added, "I don't need 'em; I'm wearing socks."

They were warm from his body heat, and covered her small feet up to her ankles. The mellow sound of his voice eased through the quiet again. "They're Eskimo mukluks."

She was pretty, awfully pretty. When he bent to kiss her, he tasted milk and the funky flavor of antacid tablets. But her mouth was incredibly soft. He raised his head long enough to lay the sitar aside, then to take the milk carton from her hands and set it on the floor, and then he slid one arm across her shoulders and the other against her breasts and into her yellow hair, and kissed her thoroughly.

* * *

**Author's Note: Anubis, Garm, and Cerberus are characters from Egyptian, Norse, and Greek mythology, respectively. (I didn't make 'em up.)**


	17. Chapter 17

**Chapter 17**

Illyria had left as suddenly as she'd arrived, vanishing just beyond the dining room and forcing a startled, bare-naked Fred to dive for cover in the kitchen pantry as the catsuit dissolved around her.

"Just humor her a little, Spike. She's got her panties in a wad over something; I'm not sure what."

"They're _your_ panties," Spike had grumbled as he handed her clothes to her.

They'd said their good-nights to Oz and given Angel and Nina a lift to the Roadrunner to pick up Nina's car. Now, as those tail lights pulled away, they found themselves simply sitting, neither one ready to begin the tiring drive home. The combination tavern and diner adjacent to the motel was still open, recent murders in the parking lot slowing business only a little, and its faulty neon sign winked at them through the windshield. Warm air from the dashboard heating vents blew in their faces, lulling them with a heavy comfort.

_It would be so easy to just close our eyes and go to sleep...until we ran out of gas and woke up with chilblains and runny noses. _Fred gave her head a quick jerk and shifted in her seat.

Spike switched off the ignition key. "Got any dosh on you, Puppet?"

"Huh? Oh. Seven...let's see...seventeen dollars."

"Should be enough. Why don't we grab a bite before we go."

* * *

No matter how many times she'd been inside one, Fred had never been able to shake the niggling feeling that she didn't belong in a bar. There was something about the atmosphere that made her feel like a child who'd wandered in uninvited, disturbing the adults and killing the party mood. In high school it'd been a challenge to try it, but once in, she'd never known quite what to do with herself or what was expected of her. All these years since, and in spite of experiencing things that would make a bar look like a Sunday School picnic, she still felt..._geeky. _

The masculine eyes crawling over her from sundry parts of the room didn't help much, either. They made her very glad that Spike was with her - _he_ blended in here, with the dark clothes and the slight swagger, his face hardening into a cool, dangerous "don't mess with me" attitude as he slid a protective arm around her waist and escorted her to a table, and in her belly and below she felt the tight powerful pull of desire for him.

Once in the booth beside her, with Fred on the inside and safely tucked out of harm's way, he relaxed and let the mask drop. "All comfy?"

"Ummmmm-_hmm_. If I were any more comfortable I'd shit nickels."

_That's Burkle himself talking. Like father, like daughter._ Spike choked out a laugh. "And not a slot machine in sight, is there? Pity."

They ordered tater tots with cheese, and Fred immediately found her appetite and gobbled the little fried potato balls floating in Velveeta paste. Spike left the bulk of them to her. He picked at a paper napkin with his thumb and forefinger, silent now and pensive. When he had shredded it into a pile of confetti, he finally spoke.

"Do you think flowers have an afterlife?"

"Flowers?" Fred wiped a glob of cheese from her bottom lip and gazed at him blankly.

"Y'know - plants. Do you think plants get to go to Heaven?"

He was completely serious, she decided. She stared at her tots and thought it over. "You mean when they die? ...I guess so. I never thought about it before. I guess they could, I mean, they're living creatures, and it's not like they could do anything to go to Hell for - except for the poison ivy that I sat in at Camp that time in my bathing suit and you don't want to know all the places that it spread to, but sure, why not? I think it's a lovely idea." She gave him a smile and studied his face, still curious. "What made you ask?"

He had the Far Away And Long Ago look in his eyes again. "There were some a friend of mine was given once."

"Someone nice, sounds like. Anyone I know?"

A strange noise cut off his answer.

* * *

It came from the throat of a thirty-six-year-old truck driver who'd been practicing pool near the restrooms.

The colored balls clicked and rumbled across the surface of her billiards table. Other than the broken Astroids game in the corner, it was the only recreational equipment in the entire Roadrunner complex, the leaky swimming pool behind the motel having long ago been given up as a lost cause. Overhead, an ugly industrial fixture lit the game through smoky tobacco haze. Seven ball in the corner pocket. Three ball, hit off-center. She tucked her hair behind her ear and bent across the table again.

Four ball, banked off a corner.

As she straightened back up, her cue stick bumped the little block of chalk on the table's rim and knocked it into a center pocket, where it tumbled out of sight. She reached into the hole, felt nothing, and frowned. Evidently the chalk had bounced deeper into the hole than she thought. She put her arm in further and groped about, trying to retrieve it.

A hand wrapped around her wrist.

She couldn't see it, down in the horizontal tube under the rim that led to the collection rack at the table's far end, but it was small and warm and it held her hand fast. The trucker let out a shriek that was almost a horse-like whinny and jerked backward, pushing against the table with her free hand. The thing inside the table tightened its grip and pulled her in past her wrist. She howled with terror, unable to get at the thing or even to see it.

By now the entire room was on its feet and staring at her. "The felt," someone wheezed. "Look at the _felt!"_

The felt was moving. Something was pressing against its soft green surface from underneath, making it bulge and undulate. Two lumps rose and fell side by side in the material as though a sleeper were raising his knees beneath his bedcovers. A third lump, larger than the first two, began to form, and before it flattened out again it clearly, unbelievably, took the shape of a human face.

A heavyset waitress yelled and lobbed a whiskey bottle at the table. It smashed across the playing surface, spraying glass and liquor on the shrieking trucker. The waitress snatched a cheeseburger and a handful of onion rings from the plate of a startled barfly and threw those, too, and then she threw the plate. There was a faint but audible hog's-squeal sound, and suddenly the trucker's hand was free.

"AAAAAAAAAAAH!" She bawled and stumbled away from the pool table and almost collided with Spike. With one eye on the table, he grabbed her wrist and turned it over, examining it on both sides. No cuts or bites or scratches, but several red, bruised, finger-shaped marks, and a larger bruise where her arm had hammered against the edge of the pocket. She wailed and clutched at him and he passed her off to Fred, who was almost toppled over by the terrified woman's embrace.

The pool table's surface was smooth again. Its felt lay flat and taut, every inch of it glued down tightly. One of the customers picked up a cue stick and prodded it from a distance with great caution, but aside from its new ornamentation of glass and china shards and disassembled cheeseburger, it seemed completely normal. The air began to fill with the chattering voices of the staff and patrons.

"It's this hanging lamp. Look, lookit its shadows. See the shadows when you jiggle it? It was just shadows, that's all."

"Shadows, my ass."

"My ass and your face. I'm tellin' you it was the lamp!"

"I ain't payin' for that hamburger."

"The table screamed, I swear to God the table screamed!"

"That was Josie screaming, you horse's butt."

Spike walked slowly around the game table, watching it, smelling it. He ran his palm along its rim where the trucker's arm had been trapped, feeling for vibrations. He knelt down and peered at its underside.

The fat waitress knelt on the other side of the table and studied its underbelly, too. "She says a hand was in it," she said to Spike. "But I don't see how. There's no place under here where anyone could hide, and there isn't no hole anyone could'a stuck their hand through." She squinted up into the black, cobwebbed corners and pressed her lips together grimly.

The truck driver had retreated to the tavern's front doorway, where she stood hiccoughing and clutching her injured wrist. Fred was saying something to her and patting her on the back, but the trucker only shook her head and squeezed her eyes shut. Eventually her partner walked over and led her out.

"It's possessed," a teenage boy with a buzzcut decided. "Dude, we need to sprinkle holy water on it or something." He looked around the room. "Anybody here wearing a crucifix?"

A wrinkled little Hispanic man stepped forward. "Here. I got this." He reached underneath his shirt and pulled out a capsicum arthritis adhesive plaster with a colored picture of Our Lady Of Guadalupe printed on one side. The buzzcut boy took it and laid it solemnly on the felt tabletop beside the splattered burger and onion rings.

The owner of the lampshadow theory rolled his eyes, exasperated. "Oh, good lord."

"No, no," the little wrinkled man corrected, "His mother."

"Come on, you people," the bartender announced loudly. "It's closing time, anyway. Let's just everyone pack up and go home. You can all come and bring your friends tomorrow to look at the haunted pool table."

Bit by bit the tavern emptied. Finally only the bartender and his waitress were left to shut down the kitchen and lock the building up tight. Fred and Spike waited patiently by their vehicle until the waitress had driven away and the bartender was climbing into his own car. "Sir!" Fred called out to him. She hurried over, Spike behind her. The bartender looked up at her with a face that was ashen.

"This is going to sound weird-" Fred pulled a business card from her purse. "-But we wanted to let you know that if you have any more trouble with, you know, out of the ordinary things like what happened in there earlier, you can give us a call. We've had lots of experience with this sort of thing, and we might be able to help. I know you probably think I'm wacko-"

"It's happened before."

The bartender spoke so softly that they had to strain to hear him. "Those killings last night, I figure that was just a drug deal gone sour, but this afternoon...this afternoon a girl from one of the motel rooms got her hand stuck in the Coke machine. I heard her yelling, and I ran out there and she was screaming and her hand was up under that plastic flap that the Coke bottle falls out of, y'know? She'd reached under it because her Coke didn't fall out like it was supposed to, and she said a hand inside the machine grabbed her."

His fingers began to shake, and he dropped his car keys. Spike picked them up and gave them back to him without a word.

"I thought she must have been high on something, but I went ahead and opened the Coke machine up anyway so she could see that there wasn't nothin' in there. There's not _room_ for anyone to be in there; shit, it's full top to bottom and side to side with bottles and racks and cogs and the coin box and there's _just no WAY!_" Tears dripped down the bartender's cheeks. He put his hand over his mouth and looked as if he were on the verge of throwing up.

"C'mon, Mate. I'll drive you home in your car, and my lady'll follow in ours. You're in no bloody shape to be behind a wheel."

The bartender nodded gratefully and handed his keys back to Spike. "I'll call in sick tomorrow. I've got some sick days comin'; I'm gonna have to call in sick. I can't come back here."


	18. Chapter 18

**Chapter 18**

The shadow people fluttered around Jeep's head like swarms of gnats, until finally he began to wheel and snap at them in irritation. They scattered and regrouped at his heels.

"We tried, Dark Master; oh, we tried. We couldn't bring anyone through."

"You brought _me_ through. How the hell hard can it be?" Jeep cupped his palm and scooped a mouthful of water from the brook, swallowed, and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. He had taken his human form again, and he was bored and horny. The she-wolves had satisfied a part of that lust, but he had no desire to be a canid 24/7, and now he wanted a woman. There were things a woman could do that a wolf couldn't.

He scowled at the groveling wraiths.

"Use some of that hoodoo that you did to make this-here." He gestured around at the cliffs and the meadow. "An' I want something to eat. Not one a' them forty-eyed rabbits, either. I want a barbecue sandwich and a two-liter bottle of RC Cola."

"The wolves were simpler, Master. The deer and fowl were simpler. Even then, we...we sometimes get the parts mixed up."

"Cain't trust you to make a woman, then, huh? Goddammit." He thought of soft, slick feminine bodies, some willing, some captive and struggling, and he let out a roar of frustration.

In the depths beneath the meadow, other residents of the hellmouth chuckled among themselves. One of them rose up and manifested itself in a fetid cloud and breathed into Jeep's ear. "Whip 'em into shape, Old Son. They won't remember anything without incentive. They owe you a queen, don't you know?" The demon leaped away from Jeep and landed in the brook with a splash. It regained its true form, and winked at the werewolf with a hollow, blasted eyesocket before disappearing into the water.

The wraiths whirled around one another, anguished. They had succeeded in bringing their new lord here because he had been a supernatural being; he was partly already of their world. Where to find another like him? Where to find another _for_ him?

It was so hard to remember.

* * *

There was a side to Fred that never failed to impress Spike. It was in full view now, both literally and figuratively, in the filtered noonday light of the curtain liners on the north side of their bedroom, and he watched it while lying flat on his back and groaning. She was perched astride him, slippery as a seal, her mouse-brown hair loose and curling and sticking to the damp of her back and breasts and shoulders, slender fingers digging into his abs, and she kept her eyes opened as long as possible and stared into his. At times he fancied that he saw a kind of frenzied determination there; an attempt to hold onto him with her gaze and a fear that he would vanish if she blinked or looked away.

_Little savage._ He could imagine her looking this way in Pylea, naked and feral and clinging to survival with a death grip _(well, perhaps not naked_,_ but as good as...blimey, Angel, you must have been blind as well as stupid.)_ Only when he moved his hand up and stroked her face to reassure her - "I'm not going anywhere, Luv. Take it all, now," - did she let her eyelids close and her head relax and lean back, far back. She rose and fell like a dancer; up on one toe and down again. Once, she frowned and shook her head as though something was distracting her, and muttered, "Not now. Not now."

It became so hard, at times like this, to hold himself in check. His body screamed to buck into her full-strength, to hammer and squeeze and plow until they were both raw. _"Ripe, wicked plum,"..."Bite your tongue." "Bite it for me."..."I've never been with such an animal..."_

But she wasn't a slayer, and she wasn't a demon. Her frail body could never withstand it.

So instead, he willed himself to relax with her; to enjoy the pretty view as sensation flooded her. And his orgasm, when it came, was not earth-shaking, although it _was_ satisfactory.

Afterward, though...when she didn't roll away with a dead face or a flip remark; when she not only allowed him to cuddle her and hold her close, but cuddled _him_ right back, and whispered little nonsense words of praise and endearment and turned her gaze on him again, a gaze now happy and peaceful...

He decided that it was definitely an adequate trade-off.

* * *

Around half an hour later, the microwave gave a small _ping_, and the smell of warm blood filled the air. Spike stuck a finger in it to test its heat, then raised the mug to his mouth and took a long, savory gulp. Behind him, Fred stirred in the bed, yawning and blinking. Suddenly she froze in mid-facerub, and her eyes widened.

"Shit."

"Beg pardon?"

"Oh, shit, why didn't she wait until we were finished? I've told her not to try to talk to me while we're in the middle of...of relationy..."

"Rumpy-pumpy?" Spike turned one of the dinette chairs around and sat down on it. "Who're you talking about?"

"Illyria."

Spike choked on his drink. "Bloody hell! You mean that bitch was in the _bed_ with us?"

"She wasn't trying to spy or perv on us or anything; she's not even interested in sex - well, not _human_ sex, but it fascinates her when dogs do that Pushme-Pullyou thing and she likes praying mantises 'cause she thinks it's funny when the female bites the male's head off." Fred waved her hands in agitation. "The thing that was upsetting her - she says that something's going on in the hellmouth, and it's just going to get worse, and she wouldn't care except that it's scaring all the ants and hellmouth people just piss her off in general...wait, let me try to remember."

She pulled her knees up to her chest and put her hands over her eyes. "...It's a threat to _us_, I think, although I don't know if she'd admit that that would bother her. It's more than protecting my shell; it's about protecting _me,_ too. Sometimes our thoughts get scrambled now. She gets lonely sometimes, and we're the only company she's got-"

"Fred." Spike moved to the side of the bed and gently tugged her hands down. "The hellmouth part, right?"

"Oh, right. Well, we'll need magic, that's for sure. This thing's got magic coming out the wazoo. And it wants women; that's what the pool table deal was all about. The more it gets, the more it wants. It's a greedy little sapsucker."

"Where's Illyria now?"

"She left. I don't know where she went." She looked so small sitting there, and so vunerable without the Old One's hard blue armor plate. Spike scooped her into a sudden embrace and kissed her lovingly.

"Better get dressed, Pet," he murmured through the kiss, "Guess we've got to round up the troops and form a battle plan."

"Okay." She smiled a sweet smile of love back at him, and waited until he had his back turned before ducking her head and licking the blanket to wipe the icky taste of pig's blood off her tongue.

* * *

"Buckle up, Jordy." Oz stuck his arm through a mound of gifts and clothes in the back seat of his uncle's car and located the end of the safety belt. Burrowed in the middle of the mound, little Jordan wiggled the belt's clasp out from underneath his bottom and clipped the buckle into place. Oz closed the rear door, and waved to Maureen and Ken through the driver's side glass. They mouthed a muffled "See you in a few days," and the car pulled slowly out of Michael Wight's driveway and down the street and away, bound for home in Phoenix.

Oz watched them until they disappeared around the corner. Then he shrugged deeper into his jacket and walked back through the carport to join the others in the house.

* * *

They gathered at the big dining room table, twelve now, armed with steno pads and golf pencils and Mace and machetes and incantations. Gunn ran through the division of labor again.

"Angel, Paloma, Spike, Oz, Thu, Singh: into the hellmouth. The rest of us hang out at Happy Trails, where there won't be any neighbors to freak out. Michael's our walkin' walkie-talkie, and under no circumstances is anyone without superpowers gonna set foot in Hell Central.

"...'Course we'll prob'ly break that last rule three or four times," he added lamely.

Nina gnawed thoughtfully on the end of a pencil. "Is there a chance that someone supernatural would be _more_ susceptible to a hellmouth's influence?"

Paloma shook her head. "Not necessarily. Hellmouths attract the _evil,_ not the mystical. We just wanna make sure that we send down people who can fight their way through pretty well. Oh, an' it also helps if they can run like a son of a bitch."

Singh narrowed his eyes at her. "Thanks a lot."

"No fear, India," Spike grinned, "One of us can always carry you out pig-a-back."

The sun was lowering, the last of its rays dragging over the edge of the world. The twelve loaded into their vehicles. Oz chewed his lip as he watched Elsie D dig her keys from her pants pocket and climb into her battered Camaro. She cranked the ignition and looked up through the windshield at him, her quiet face undecipherable. Finally he got in beside her.

"El, are you sure about this? It's never too late to change your mind. There's nothing wrong with staying here tonight, where it's safer."

"No. I want to go with you."

From the lips of a Southerner, "y'all" was always plural. Oz's years of travel had taught him that for a vernacular fact. "You," though - "you" meant ONE. One particular, singled-out, individual, chosen person.

His face glowed with a smile. "You're a brave little toaster."

He slide on a pair of black sunglasses and propped an elbow on the ledge of the Camaro's passenger window. Elsie switched a console button, and Black Oak Arkansas bellowed from the speakers as they whipped into the street behind the rest of the demon hunters.


	19. Chapter 19

**Chapter 19**

In the largest of the Happy Trails tourist cabins, Dilip Singh rummaged through cupboards and dropped mysterious objects into a backpack. Other bits - herbs, totems, vials of peculiar-smelling liquid - he gathered into a box. He handed the box to Angel and tucked a couple of faded Big Chief writing tablets under his arm, then opened his back door and with a nod of his head indicated to the others that they were to go out onto the patio. "I don't like to cast spells in the house. Things get broken."

Once in the yard they pulled up lawn chairs and the picnic table into a half-circle around the center of the patio, and waited as Dilip knelt on the concrete floor and prepared his magic. He laid out three mummified bird claws and drew a complicated design around them with colored chalk, weaving the patterns with precision and care. Elsie D watched from the far edge of the circle.

"We aren't too far away?" she asked in a whisper, not wanting to disturb him. "Why don't you do this at the Roadrunner, where the...the _thing_ was?"

"Don't want to drop in on top of it." Dilip flipped open one of the Big Chiefs and consulted a page. "The spirit world lies alongside this one; two pieces of paper, one on top of the other. Sometimes one of the papers moves around. Sometimes they both move. Sometimes one of the papers gets punched through." He continued to scan the tablet, murmuring his reply as though he were not really listening to himself. "We go in and follow our noses. Maybe we scare the thing when it sees a slayer."

He looked up suddenly. "Any of you ever been in a hellmouth?"

Shakes of the head from Oz and Nina. Spike uncrossed his arms to raise a finger. "Just long enough to burst into flames and explode."

"Oh. Right." Dilip lifted several small talismans from the box and placed them around his neck and into his pockets. On the picnic bench and table, Kay leaned forward on her plump arms and bosom, eyes wide. "You know, I 've never heard more than just the bare bones of that story. What happened, exactly?"

Nina felt Angel's arm tense at the question, and saw his jaw inexplicably tighten. Spike, too, reacted oddly, with a melancholy look coming over his face.

"Still not sure, exactly. We knew a demon that called itself The First was setting some kind of attack in motion, probably involving turok-hans - proto-vampires. It wanted to destroy the slayer line. Watcher'd gathered all the potential slayers he could find - ones that hadn't been called yet, and hadn't been killed - and brought 'em to Sunnydale for safekeeping, and we found a hellmouth entrance in the basement of the school, an' so Buffy rigged up a plan to take the girls down there and have 'em hold off the turoks until her witch could turn them _all_ into slayers-"

"Wait a minute, wait a minute," Kay interrupted. "...They waited until the girls were down there _with_ the turoks before slayerizing them? That doesn't make any sense. They'd have been sitting ducks! I mean, I'm psychokinetic and _I _wouldn't trust myself to be able to push back a demon army. Why didn't they give them their slayer powers _before_ sending them down?"

"I didn't say it was a good plan."

"So what was _that_ hellmouth like?" Thu pressed.

"The part we were in? Kind of cavernous. Rocky bits everywhere, and caves and tunnels. Cold, an' had a smell like a charnel house. And there was always a feeling that beasties were watching you from behind the walls." Spike turned back to Dilip. "That sound about like your experience?"

Dilip shrugged. "I never been in one. I just wondered what they looked like."

He stood up and dusted his pants off. "Okay, it's ready." The artwork he'd created covered a good three square feet of space, and looked something like the sand paintings of the Navaho people. Without being told, the group got to its feet. From his box of tricks Dilip withdrew more talismans, strung on cotton cords into necklaces. He handed one to each of them.

"Wear them under your shirts, against your skin. They'll offer some protection. Not a lot, but better than nothing. It depends on how much faith you put in them."

The charms were thumb-sized; queer little carvings with tiny eyes and cunning faces. Angel touched his with a testing finger. "They won't burn you," Dilip assured him.

The mage opened a bottle of pale green fluid and poured a trail of it from the edge of the design out onto the lawn. He held the bottle up to the glare of the porch light's bulb and squinted at its remaining contents, then used what was left to make a thin, wet ring two yards in diameter in the soil at the trail's end. Then he gave the bottle to Fred. "Got the lighter?"

She nodded. "Remember, guys, Illyria didn't seem to think that it was something huge at this point, but that it _was_ serious enough to warrant stopping before it got any bigger. So stay on your toes."

The six - slayer, werewolf, goat-eater, vampires, sorcerer - stepped to one side. Fred knelt beside the design on the patio and flicked the striker of a small plastic lighter with "Souvenir of Marfa, Texas" stamped on its side. A feeble spark winked in the darkness. She scowled, shook it, and tried it again. The lighter still refused to produce a flame. "Piece of crap!" she muttered, banging it on the ground.

"Here." Spike tossed a large, heavy, burnished gold lighter to her with a smile. "This should work."

Fred recognized it as the one she had given him for Christmas. She quickly struck a bright, strong flame with it, touched the fire to the design, then closed the lighter and kissed it and lobbed it back to Spike with a smile of her own. "Bring it back to me."

The fire hissed and began to follow the lines of the chalk as though they were soaked in kerosene. When it completed the pattern, it hit the green fluid and raced along it until it reached the liquid circle. The ground inside the circle split in neat lines radiating out from the center, and then curled inward and collapsed, revealing a pool of wet, muddy brown. Smooth and oily and uniformly dull, it had the look of potters' clay, or of old whey forgotten and souring in an abandoned milk pan. Reflections from the ring of fire danced on its surface, until the flames died down and went out. A dank smell rose from it, bitter and mildewy.

The group stared at the pool for several seconds without speaking. Finally Spike sighed. "Got to jump into that, I suppose."

Thu looked up at Dilip hopefully. "Couldn't you, like, part it?" She leaned over the pool and yelled down, "THE PHARAOH'S CHARIOTS ARE COMING!"

The pool burped up a solitary bubble.

"Ahhh, damn it," Paloma groaned, and rolled up her sleeve. She squatted, grimaced, and shoved her arm into the pool and began feeling around. The pool barely rippled; it seemed to be made of a very foul flavor of pudding. When she withdrew her arm, she wore an expression of vast relief. "It's only a foot or so deep, and there's empty air underneath it." She held her arm up, clean and dry. "Look, none of it even stuck to me."

"If you'd waited, I could have tried to drain it out," Kay reminded her, but Dilip shook his head.

"No. It's supposed to be like this." Before anyone could stop him, he stepped off into the pool and sank below its surface, vanishing from sight.

There was no splash; the pool simply closed over him as smoothly as if he'd never been there. The little group gave a collective gasp. Several of them dropped to their knees and thrust both arms in, searching for a hold on the man. The chupacabra shouted and flopped onto her stomach and plunged under completely from the waist up.

"DON'T!" Thu grabbed at her ankles and tried to pull her out, but Paloma kicked her away.

Seconds later the chupa's head popped back up again. "He's all right. There's a floor, and breathable air. He said to come on if you're coming." She scooted forward into the pool like a salamander and disappeared.

There was another round of silence.

Thu looked dubiously at the pool and at the others. "Eww, eww, ewwwwwww..."

She clamped her hand over her nose and mouth, squinched her eyes shut tightly, and dropped in.

Spike gave Fred a quick kiss and followed the slayer over the side with a smirk at Angel and Oz. "Off we go, boys. Don't want to keep the ladies waiting." Elsie D felt a warm hand gently squeeze her fingertips, and then Oz was gone, too.

"Your turn, Big Guy. Knock 'em dead." Nina patted Angel on the shoulder. He looked up to see her smiling for him - a bright, tremulous smile. It occurred to him that he wanted nothing more at that moment than to tuck her away in a tall, safe tower.

He went into the pool instead.

The remaining six, shivering in the winter night, turned their coat collars up against the wind and waited.

* * *

Hell was pink and glowing, and it gave a little under one's feet. Its walls curved upward to a vaulted ceiling, and if you didn't look directly at them but only from the corners of your eyes, those walls gave one the uneasy impression that they had a pulse. High up the side of one of the walls, at about the height of a second-story window, was the muddy brown portal that lead to the terrestrial world; it lay pasted there like a dark ulcer on pink, glowing skin. The walls opened in one direction only, to another chamber or a tunnel or a _(gullet.) _Oz thought suddenly of the ulcer in Elsie's stomach, and of the microscopic protozoa and bacteria whose universe is a human body.

"This is under your _lawn_?" Thu murmured. Her eyes in the bordello-pink light were enormous.

"No. Dig with a shovel, you'll just get dirt. This is another world. Another piece of paper." Dilip pulled a snippet of green felt from one of his pockets and held it quietly between his fingers as he closed his eyes and appeared to meditate. Silence fell over Hell and its visitors. There was no sound anywhere but the soft whisper of human breathing; no movement but the slight shiftings of hips and feet. The air here was warm, and thick as taffy. The demon hunters began to squirm uncomfortably in their coats.

Finally Dilip opened his eyes again. "Mike says to go this way." He tucked the little piece of felt back into his clothes and walked across the chamber into the tunnel, then turned left and around a corner and out of sight. One by one the others followed him. As they stepped into the tunnel's maw Oz glanced up at the ceiling, half-wondering if he would see a gigantic uvula.

* * *

A pile of charcoal briquettes was set afire on the portable grill, and those above ground warmed their hands over it and discreetly wiped their drippy noses. They watched the pool, and they also watched Michael, who occupied one end of the picnic table. His bony shoulders and round, pockmarked face bent down studiously over a shred of green fabric, twin to the one that Dilip carried. Both bits had been cut from the Roadrunner's haunted billiard table. Now they were serving as homing beacons. From the way that he held the swatch and the barely discernible movement of his lips, Michael looked as if he were a man at prayer, counting his rosary beads. He was passing directions to Dilip.

"They've found the path. It won't take them much longer to reach the meadow. I still can't quite make out what lives there." He took a sip of the coffee that Gunn handed him, and rubbed his eyes.

Elsie D watched the red, burning coals in the grill throb and crumble. "...They're not really in Hell, are they?"

Gunn shook his head. "Nah. A hellmouth's just a kind of gateway to other dimensions. It's like a bus station. ...A really, really evil bus station. With a lotta evil bums and winos and chicken hawks who live in the evil bus station and wander out onto the street a lot to steal your purse and cut your throat and invite all the other evil people to come live in the station, too."

He looked at the pool again.

"Damn, I can't wait to fill in this thing."

* * *

The underground six walked single-file along the hellmouth's fleshy-warm corridor. Thu Kheim was near the rear. Her eyes were narrowed with concentration; her little brow wrinkled. Her lips were moving as Michael's had done. As she caught up to Spike and Paloma, they were able to make out her words: "...There once was a vampire, toothy / Who dated a woman werewoofy / Their children must shun / Both the moon and the sun / dadada dadada dadada I can't think of an ending."

"For God's sake, Thu! Pay attention!" Paloma hissed. "This is serious shit we're wading into. We don't have time to play."

"Sorry. It's just been bugging me for days."

"Well, figure it out later. Right now you just need to be thinkin' about what's around us. Listen with your whole body."

The chupacabra gave her a stern warning look, fearsome in the bizarre rose-colored lighting, and then moved on. Thu sighed and fell in step behind her. A few paces later, she heard Spike's low voice at her back: "Poofy."

"Huh?"

"Toothy. Woofy. Poofy."

Thu repeated his three words, mouthing them soundlessly, and beamed with delight.

* * *

The meadow appeared so suddenly that they almost fell into it. No light from its false sun penetrated the cave to alert them; they'd simply rounded a corner and suddenly there it was, smelling of daffodils and awash in green and gold and blue. There was no breeze - in their rush to create the meadow the wraiths had forgotten to stabilize parts of their spells, and so the breeze didn't always function - but the tall grasses bent and swayed anyway. The six hunters dropped behind them and crept out into the meadow on their bellies.

Through the cover of the grasses they spotted a brook, and a cloud of vapor hanging over it. The vapor was roiling, curling, separating into wispy puffs - and now the puffs took the shapes of human beings. Ill-formed and ghostly, the puffs rose into the sky, with soft, whispering voices trailing in their wake. Suddenly they shot forward all in a body and careened over the heads of Angel and the others. In the blink of an eye the vapor clouds entered the cave that the demon-hunters had just exited. In another blink they disappeared into its depths.

* * *

The telephone rang in Dilip's apartment cabin, and Fred scurried to answer it before its racket disturbed Michael's visions. She Hello'd into the receiver and heard her father's voice: "Hey, Darlin'! I called over at your place and no one answered so I thought maybe y'all might be in the office. How's every little thing?"

Fred couldn't help but smile. "Just fine, Daddy."

"That little fella doin' okay - the little werewolf?"

"Yeah, he's doing fine, too. His cousin gave him his first transformation training yesterday, and he did really well."

"Well, that's good. I'm glad y'all got some doctors out there that know about all that stuff. I was kinda worried that he might catch the Parvo."

"Oh, they stay pretty much on top of that-"

Something was happening out in the yard. A commotion of some kind - Fred craned her neck to see through the tiny kitchen window. "Daddy, I'm going to have to call you back. I think a little emergency's come up." She dropped the phone on the countertop and barreled out the back door.

Nina was sprawled on her back in the grass, her legs stretched out in front of her, and she was straining and yelling and pushing against the ground with both hands. Charles had his arms locked around her middle, and he appeared to be struggling as well. They had crashed into the barbecue grill and tipped it over, and ash and live coals were strewn across the patio. Michael and Kay and Elsie D were rushing in now and grabbing at her legs and arms. It took several seconds of staring at that lunatic scene for Fred to realize that Nina was being dragged toward the pool by something invisible.

Invisible, and very strong.

Then the breath was knocked out of her as phantom hands suddenly curled around her ankles and jerked her feet up and slammed her onto her side, and dimly Fred felt herself being hauled to the pool alongside Nina.


	20. Chapter 20

**Part 20**

The wraiths had sensed intruders in their meadow the minute the demon-hunters had set foot in it. There was brief excitement among them when they saw that two of the strangers were female, but on closer inspection they discovered that one was not human and the other not yet an adult. Their disappointment had been keen, until one of the more quick-witted wraiths (who in life had been a disciple of Charles Manson before being murdered in a fit of jealousy because _her_ hexes actually _worked_) noted that the strangers had entered; ergo there must be a door.

"You and you and you and you, stay! The rest of us come, find the door the door the doordoordoordoor look for the door..." The words had tumbled out of her mouth in a barely coherent jabber as she led the shadow people into the intruders' cave at breakneck speed and up its esophagus and into the pink chamber, where the mud-colored portal vomited them out onto Dilip's lawn.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Human women here! Young and nice and pretty. Surely one of them would serve. The wraiths wasted no time: they swarmed over the legs of the young women and pulled as hard as they could. One of the women took no notice of them at all, while another, dark of skin and thick of ankle, brushed at her calves and muttered something about the fleas from Singh's cat.

The third one, though, was solid under their fingers, and smelled of wolf. The wraiths shrieked with joy and fell upon her.

A fourth woman came out of a house, and the wraiths abandoned their fruitless struggle with the two other women and tried this new one instead. She too had been touched by the demonic! _Two_ mates to appease the master!

This one gasped as she hit the ground, and halfway to the hole she began squirming and thrashing. The wraiths tightened their grip and pulled faster. Her squirms resurrected in one of the shadow men a vague memory of sex, and he burrowed underneath her sweater and slid across her skin with cold, exploring hands.

They were almost to the hellmouth's opening with their prizes. If the other humans chose to hang on and be dragged in as well, let them. Perhaps they could be the basis for the barbecue that their lord so craved.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Below in the demon dimension, the hunters stared after the departed wraiths.

"_That_ was Illyria's big scarey bogey?" Spike snorted. "I've _farted_ vapors that were more menacing than that."

"Spike, we can really do without the comparative anatomy."

"I'm just sayin'."

Angel scowled at the younger vampire. "Just...shut up. I'm trying to get us through this." He squinted in the unaccustomed sunlight and scanned their surroundings. "There's a few more caves up on those ledges; I'll take a look in them. The rest of you stay here until I call for you."

Paloma had lifted herself a few inches from the ground, supporting her body on her hands and on the balls of her feet, her legs contorted out at her sides like a horned lizard's, and she had already begun slithering forward with Thu right behind her. She halted and looked back at Angel with a surprised expression. She exchanged a glance with Dilip, and Thu looked uncertainly at them both. Finally she spoke to Angel in a soft, gentle voice.

"Manito...you're not our leader."

Angel looked as startled as if he'd been slapped in the face with a wet cat.

Paloma hastened to remove some of the sting from the blow. "I mean, I'm sure you're a good one, and you done it for a long time, but we -- we don' work that way. We never have. We just all kind of decide together, you know?"

"Oh." Angel nodded blankly, at a loss for words. "Oh. All right. Sorry."

"Es no problem." The chupacabra's eyes slowly enlarged to their natural size, and her talons and razor teeth emerged. "You guys want to fan out in pairs? Stay in shouting distance of each other?"

"Let me check in first." Dilip fingered the piece of felt for a moment. Then he returned it to his pocket. "Nothing from above. I guess Mike still hasn't seen anything more."

---------------------------------------------------------------

Oz and Spike took the far side of the meadow, moving through goldenrod and fescue and patches of small purple violets. They passed a brook, bright and clear; it glinted in the sunshine and gave off soft bubbling sounds. Crickets trilled in the grass. The air overhead was filled with birdsong.

"It'd help if we knew what the hell we were looking for. Place looks like it was made for fairies an' pixies an' leprechauns an' little fruity elves. If the bloody Lollipop Guild comes prancing out of the bushes I'm turnin' right 'round and-"

"Fire."

Spike looked down instinctively and jerked his foot up from where he'd almost planted it squarely in a small crevice full of hot, steaming magma. It lay half-hidden in the grass like an Easter egg, glowing red and orange. He rocked back on his heels and gaped at the fissure, then nodded to Oz gratefully. "Thanks. Guess the elves are out of sorts today." The magma tumbled along the little gash in the earth as merrily as if it were the brook's water, and though it gave off a blistering heat, the plants beside it didn't shrivel or burn. Mesmerized, they watched it for a moment or two, then moved on, keeping wary eyes on the ground now as much as on the horizon.

Across the meadow, they spotted Angel and Dilip making their way among the low bluffs and outcroppings of stone and cavern. The girls were nowhere in sight, but they could imagine them slinking through the tall grass like lionesses, just below their line of vision. The sweet fragrance of flowers was everywhere...and underneath it was another odor.

"You smellin' that?" Spike whispered.

"Yeah. It's like a diaper pail."

"It's the whole sodding privy. With a dead rat thrown in for good measure." The scent was so subtle that a mere human nose would probably not have detected it, but to Spike and Oz it smelled ghastly. "Unless one of us just shat ourselves and doesn't want to admit it, I'd say this place is about to show its true nature."

The false sun was warm on their faces. Fescue and goldenrod swayed gently. They hunched motionless, watching, listening.

It hit from behind.

Inky black shadows poured through the grass and enveloped them with the speed of a flash mudslide, tossing and tumbling them across the ground. They found themselves swaddled, yet there was nothing solid for them to fight against. The blackness hefted them both, then converged on the smaller of the two men and hoisted him into the air by his feet. Spike made a desperate leap for him, but missed by inches. "OZ!"

----------------------------------------------------------------

"Holy shit." Thu and Paloma stared in wonder as Oz ascended into the sky. He came to a halt about forty feet up, dangling upside down, with a black, vaporous cloud around his legs. He appeared at first to be either dead or unconscious, but soon they realized that he was simply holding very, very still.

Angel thundered up beside the girls, with Dilip hurrying behind him. Spike joined them. "It's a force of some kind -- strong -- damned fast. India, can you get him down?"

The sorcerer lifted his palm toward the sky and began an incantation. The cloud flickered grey and white and back to black; then a piece of it broke away and drifted down into the grasses. It rose up again, about the height of a man, and then it _was_ a man, or rather the shadow of one.

The crickets' chirping swelled to a high scream.

"Give us back the boy," Dilip ordered. The shadow man's arm reached for him, stretching out along the ground until it touched his chest. Dilip pulled a talisman from under his shirt. The shadow drew back, gasping.

"A bargain," it whispered. "Wizard."

"What kind of bargain?"

"A human woman."

"That's all?"

----------------------------------------------------------------

_Was_ that all? It was so hard to remember.

What else had Master complained of? Food, yes, and drink...Was it power? To be a lord greater than any other lord of the dead? Had that been the master's wish or theirs? Perhaps, now that he gave it some thought, a hound was too common. There were other beasts with more strength, bigger size. Their lord...

Their lord strolled out of one of the caves. He was full wolf at the moment, groggy from sleep and blinking in the sun. The invaders were a fair distance from him, so he failed to notice them, and stretched and yawned instead, then had himself a good scratch.

The wraith suddenly felt not at all satisfied.

"Make our lord monstrous. Not a wolf; greater than a wolf. Elephant, bear, serpent, bull." The wraith danced with excitement as it warmed to its idea. "The strength to move between worlds. Give our lord -- or we drop the boy."

Angel jerked toward the shadowy figure with venom in his face. Dilip threw out his arm and stopped him.

"You're asking three for one. No deal. I make one magic for one trade."

_One magic? Only one? But this wizard remembers the words we've forgotten. He remembers the spells. Don't anger him too much..._

"You remember the words," it sighed. "Magic..._I _was a warlock. One for one. Make the master greater than a wolf."

Dilip put the talisman back around his neck, pulled his knapsack off, and knelt down on the ground. "What kind of animal you want him to be?"

The wraith puddled onto the ground at a safe distance from him, and its soft voice seemed to come from everywhere. "Make him a dragon."

----------------------------------------------------------------

Dilip's expression was inscrutable, and seemed to be etched in stone. For one instant, though, Spike imagined he saw a tiny glint in the sorcerer's eye. He sidled up beside Angel and murmured near his ear.

"Don't panic; I think the old fellow knows what he's doing. Better get ready to make a dive for Oz in mid-air, though."

"He'd better know," Angel hissed back. _He damn **well **better. We can't set another dragon loose in the world._

There was a rattling sound as Dilip shook some rune stones and bone fragments from the knapsack and cast them on the ground. He studied them carefully. "I can make a dog into a dragon with a lion's head. Will that do?"

The shadow man lifted back up into the air and merged with the cloud that held Oz captive. Oz's face had become beet red. Thu Khiem whispered, "I think he's gonna barf."

Shadow voices wafted down to them. "Agreed. Give your word or we throw him from the sky."

"Dragon dog with a lion's head. My word. Back off and let me work."

Dilip swept the stones and bones back into the knapsack. He turned his gaze upon the huge wolfish creature dozing on the ledge, and took up his chant again. The words were clipped and harsh, with a _bahng bahng banga bahng _percussion cadence.

The wolf raised its head and looked at them.

"Bah-tah-seeah-seeka-sha..." Dilip's voice grew louder, and he began to clap his hands with every beat.

The werewolf drew its lips back and exposed its wicked white teeth. The chanting went even higher in volume. Every hackle on the creature's body rose...and then the creature rose, too.

It leaped from its ledge and charged toward the demon-hunters, eyes black and insane and saliva slinging from its flews. Its growl was like the roar of an approaching freight train. Sunlight ricocheted off its fur, save for a small bald gash of healing scar tissue across the top of its head. It closed in -- sprang --

"YAHMAHNAH!"

A little brown Pekingese landed at their feet. Its bug eyes and flattened, mushed-in face glared up at them from a few inches off the ground, radiating hate, and then stared at itself in shock. It yapped furiously and waddled around, its long hair rippling in the sunlight, save for a small bald scar on its head.

Dilip had kept his word: the miniature Fu dogs of China, bred to resemble dragons and lions, guardians of the gateways of Peking's palaces and temples. A dragon dog with a lion's head.

In the next instant Angel tore off his talisman and hurled it at the boiling black cloud. The cloud shrieked as the charm passed through it, and the shadow people split apart and shot away in three different directions. Oz plummeted. He was ten feet from the ground when both vampires made a running jump and caught him.

----------------------------------------------------------------

The wraiths in Dilip's yard were faring no better. They had met an obstacle in Kay, who pushed their captives back with her mind for every inch they pulled them forward, although she was beginning to tire. And now Elsie remembered the charm on the cord around her neck. She yanked the necklace off and began beating the invisible entities with it. With every blow she heard a faint squeal or a ghostly cry, and suddenly one of Nina's legs was free. The others saw, and brought out their talismans also.

Painful gasps whispered in the air, and then dying ones, and finally, silence.

----------------------------------------------------------------

The underground group picked its way slowly back through the meadow, Spike and Thu Kheim supporting a dizzy, exhausted Oz between them. "Shouldn't we do something about the evil doggy?" the slayer wondered aloud. "What if those things try to turn it into something else?"

Angel looked behind them, up at the cliffs where the she-wolves were eyeing the tiny morsel of doglet and silently closing in. "I really don't think they're gonna have time."

As they entered their own cave and made their way to the portal, the demon with the blasted eyesockets manifested in the brook. It watched them go, chuckling to itself. And still chuckling, it fished a bloated shadow person out of the water and began to gnaw on it.

----------------------------------------------------------------

**Epilogue**

Early in the evening of January 7th, Spike strolled up the walk to the porch of Michael's house. He found Oz perched there, looking contemplative. Pulling a lighter and a package of smokes from his jacket pocket, he hopped up onto the porch as well.

"I was just starting a gallop around the town to look for knaves and villains. Want to go for a pint afterward?"

Oz shook his head apologetically. "I'll have to take a raincheck. I'm waiting for Jordy. My uncle's dropping him off for the weekend for some more training."

Spike peered at him in the yellow glow of the porchlight. "Sure you feel up to it? Your eyes still look a bit bloodshot."

"It's not too bad. Nina made some pretty good progress this afternoon. Only had one setback where she kinda lost it for a couple of seconds and tore all her clothes off, but her chain held, so no big."

"Huzzahs all around, then! What were you doing just now, starin' off into space?"

"Conjugating 'shat.'" Oz's face was droll and thoughtful. "'I shat; you shat; they shat; he, she, or it shat.' ...Not a lot of variety."

Spike grinned as he lit a cigarette. "You're a queer one, Dog Boy."

"So they tell me. Where's Fred?"

"Building a sea monkey tank in our bedroom."

A final bit of twilight faded in the west, throwing that part of the world into darkness. The night blanketed the neighborhood and the two young men. Midwinter breezes set a tree limb in motion and it scratched against the porch roof, like a puppy begging to be let inside.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

**THE END**

-----------------------------------------------------------------

**Author's Note: Thank you, everyone, for your feedback and your patience as I wrestle with Real Life for time to write. There's a sequel to this story in the works; I just have to kick-start it and pick out a title. And then point behind Real Life and yell, "LOOK OVER THERE!" and run away while she's distracted.**


End file.
